The Night of the Confinement
by The Wild Wild Whovian
Summary: The time for Artie's and Lily's baby to arrive has come. Unfortunately, someone else shows up as well, someone with plans to turn this joyous occasion into Artie's worst nightmare. Now he and Jim must save the Gordon girls, or die trying. AU.
1. Teaser

___Thanks to Cal Gal for betaing._

**Teaser**

The rhythmic _click, click, click _of the sleek steel needles, stitch after stitch after stitch, made a soothing accompaniment to the ticking of the clock. Slip the end of the needle into the next loop, wrap the yarn, then withdraw the needle again carrying the new loop with it, and slip the old loop off the other needle. Again, and again, and again.

"I think I'm finally getting the hang of this," Lily murmured to herself as she held her work up and examined it. Oh yes, this second effort was turning out much better than the first one, which was now tucked away out of sight within the knitting bag alongside of the skein of yarn. She gave a moment's shudder before commencing the next stitch. Ugh, but the first one had been a trial! She'd lost count of how many stitches she'd dropped, how many times she'd lost her place, how many purls she'd made that should have been knits and vice versa, how many times she'd pulled the whole thing off the needles and unraveled it all with quick, sharp jerks of her wrists, turning it back into a tangled mass of yarn — and then started over. Really, she probably ought to start that pitiful first finished bootie over yet again! And likely she would, once she had this second one completed. She felt much more at ease now with the turning of the heel and the upcoming closing of the toe.

She held it up again. Yes, this one was a vast improvement on the first! And as she continued making one stitch after another, she wondered that she'd never taken up knitting before, imagining how many projects she could have completed in all that time of waiting her turn at rehearsals, or waiting at train stations, or riding on trains from one theater to the next.

And here she was now, waiting on a train. That is, she was on a train parked in a railroad yard, and she was waiting for her husband and his partner to come home. When they had left earlier, Artie had advised her not to wait up for them, that it might well be a long day.

She gave a sigh that was half chuckle. "But aren't they all long days?" she asked herself. She glanced at the clock, then at the windows along the sides of the varnish car, noting the long shadows and the low angle of the sun. At least she didn't have to get dinner! Once Jim and Artie were home, they would all slip over to the baggage car where a certain tall brown cabinet stood in the corner. One of the three would unlock the door, Artie would call out, "Rosalind, we're home!" and in the time it took them to cross the console room and find the current location of the dining room, Artie's TARDIS Rosalind would have a six-course meal awaiting them.

"One of the perks of marrying a Time Lord," Lily smiled to herself. "Oh!"

A little thump under her heart alerted her to another perk of married life: the soon-coming recipient of Lily's knitting project. She laid a hand over her burgeoning belly in happy anticipation, feeling another bump, then another, in a slow but steady rhythm.

Lily chuckled, remembering the first time the child within had done this. How puzzled she'd been! Why would the baby keep kicking at that same spot over and over in a regular tempo? What was going on? With a touch of alarm in her eyes that she'd not been able to conceal, she had gone to Artemus and asked him what could possibly be happening.

And Artie had laid his hand over hers, feeling the tiny thumps, one after another, his head tipped to one side as if listening. Then he laughed. "Oh, that's what it is!" he'd announced with delight. "Hiccups. Our daughter has the hiccups!"

Daughter! Oh yes, daughter. Right from the very beginning, almost from the day they had realized Lily was expecting, Artie had always proclaimed confidently that they were going to have a girl. Lily, being a bit more pragmatic, had insisted on them picking a name for a boy as well as the feminine one Artie already was using for the baby. And Lily was currently knitting these booties from yellow yarn. Just in case.

The light outside was fading. Laying aside the knitting, Lily slipped forward to the edge of her seat, then took hold of the arm of the sofa and used it to lever herself upright. She paused for a second, making sure of her balance, her hand again coming to rest atop her belly. Oh, surely it couldn't be much longer now! Or at least, she couldn't possibly get much bigger, could she?

Slowly, in a penguin-like waddle she would be embarrassed to have anyone see her use on stage, Lily worked her way around the parlor turning up the lights. She was just coming to the gas lamps in the corner closest to the door when she saw a shadow pass over the frosted glazing.

Oh good! With a relieved smile, she drew the door open. "Artemus! I'm so glad you're… home?"

For the figure in the door was not Artemus Gordon, nor was it James West either. A tall man stood there — princely, distinguished, handsome. He smiled and bowed to her. "Ah, good evening, Mrs Gordon. It is so pleasant to finally make your acquaintance, my dear."

His voice was deep and cultured, his accent nebulously foreign. Lily stared up at him. "I… You'll have to excuse me, sir, but I believe you have the advantage of me. You are…?"

His smile deepened. "An old… colleague, as it were, of your husband and of his dear friend Capt… that is, _Mr _West. We have, regrettably, seen each other so seldom over the years. And yet how fortuitous this meeting tonight, with Mr Gordon's lovely, blushing, _expectant _bride!"

Lily drew back from the door and from the stranger standing in it. Whoever he was, he was giving her the willies, especially with his indelicate reference to her pregnant status. "I'll have to ask you to leave," she said firmly. "You may give me your card, if you wish, for my husband to get in touch with you, Mr…"

His smile never left his face. "_Colonel_," he corrected. "Col Noel Bartley Vautrain." He bowed again. "At your service, Mrs Gordon."

A chill ran down Lily's spine. Colonel Vautrain! She had heard Jim and Artie speak of this man, of his madness, of his hatred of Jim for having saved his life but not his legs during the Battle of Vicksburg, and of still later his reappearance, somehow with legs again and with another name, at which time they had discovered him to be an old enemy of Artie's, a Time Lord who laid the blame for the death of his wife and child at the feet of a very young Artemus Gordon, back when his name had been Peregrine.

And here the man stood before her, smiling down at her regally, genially. Calling upon all her acting skills, Lily stilled the trembling of her hands and said, "I'm sorry, Col Vautrain, but this is not a good time. If you could come back later, I'm sure Mr Gordon would be happy to receive you, but…" She made to close the door.

"No," he said. Curiously, in no way did the man move to block the door, yet somehow it stuck firmly, stubbornly refusing to be closed. "You see, Mrs Gordon," he continued, still with that suave manner and with that unremitting smile upon his handsome face, "no matter how much you may find the timing to be inconvenient, to me it is perfect. You are here, and _Messieurs _West and Gordon are not. And you must call me by the name all my oldest, ah, _friends _know me by: Prof Harlequin." That infernal smile persisted as he stepped forward, coming inside, drawing closer and still closer to her.

Lily gave up on trying to shut the frozen door and swiftly retreated, putting the desk between herself and the looming menace. Knowing she could never outrun him — no, nor even a tortoise! — in her present condition, she nevertheless spun and waddled away as fast as her ungainly form could go.

And then a hand closed on her arm, and she was whirled back to face him again. "Why, Mrs Gordon! One would get the unfortunate impression that you're afraid of me! Why would that be, hmm? Could it be that your husband has told you of what happened back home on Gallifrey, how he killed my wife and our precious unborn child…"

"No," she interjected, "no, he didn't kill them. It was an accident, a lab accident. She was his teacher and he was a child; she protected him when the experiment blew up. It wasn't his fault! It…"

"…how he _murdered _them!" the man went on, relentlessly overriding her voice with his own, his fathomless dark eyes twin flames of searing fire. "And when he somehow induced the authorities to absolve him of his obvious guilt, I took matters into my own hands. I sought to pay him back — wound for wound, stripe for stripe — to administer the _justice _our courts denied me…"

"By trying to kill his mother! Yes, Artemus told me! You hounded him from his home and drove him and his parents into hiding, you madman, you maniac!"

"_I am not mad!" _His face convulsed and he shook her, snapping her back and forth until her teeth rattled in her head. "The madness is on the part of a justice system that protected the vile murderer and clapped the bereaved into the insane asylum! They…!" With a sudden supreme effort he mastered himself and smiled down at her once more. In cordial, genteel tones he reiterated, "I am not mad. And now…" He gestured at the door, which obediently closed itself though no hand had touched it. "…now, my dear Mrs Gordon, we shall have a seat…" He steered her toward the sofa on which her knitting lay forsaken. "…and we shall wait for your husband and for his great good friend." And as her legs of their own accord went out from under her, dropping her onto the sofa, he settled himself beside her and drew from an inside pocket the strangest looking gun Lily had ever seen.

"What, what is that?" she asked, no longer able to mask her foreboding.

"This?" Gently with his thumb he stroked the smooth metallic surface of the strange gun. "This is a staser, Mrs Gordon, a particular weapon of my homeland. A Time Lord shot by such a weapon not only dies, but perishes utterly, unable to regenerate." He smiled brightly at his captive. "Oh, and it kills humans as well. She shall be so hungry tonight, this little staser of mine, insatiable in fact! For she shall kill you, and your child, and your husband, and that dear friend of your husband's as well. And in such manner shall I at last be avenged for the murder of my own dear wife and child." A deep chuckle welled up from the depths of his being.

He glanced back toward the door and added, "Do get comfortable, Mrs Gordon. Work on your knitting! For you see, we may have a long wait ahead of us." He turned back to meet her haunted eyes. "And I should so hate for you to become bored," he said.


	2. Act One, Part One

**Act One, Part One**

"Well, all's well that ends well, right, Jim?" said Artie happily as they steered their horses for the railroad yards and home.

"It certainly is," Jim replied. They had reason to be happy, for they had wrapped up their latest case, arrested the bad guy and his minions, and rescued a lovely young lady who had been particularly effusive in expressing her gratitude to Jim.

Well, and Artie she had rewarded with a handshake.

And now they were on their way home. "This calls for a celebration!" Artie proclaimed. "I'll ask Rosalind to pull out all the stops: beef Stroganoff, asparagus _á l'Hollandaise_, cherries Jubilee, champagne, truffles…"

"A piñata," put in James.

"A…" That put the brakes on Artie's imagination only for the merest second. Then, "Sure, Jim, sure. If you'd like." And as a teasing gleam crept into his eyes, Artie added, "And fireworks afterwards, just to make it complete."

Jim grinned as they rode on. Shortly the railroad yards came into view and they headed on past the depot to reach the Wanderer, intending to load their horses aboard the baggage car in anticipation of being sent on to their next assignment.

As they drew closer though, Jim reined up, as did Artie. Both men frowned, and Artie gave voice to what they were each thinking: "Why are the lights turned up only along one side of the varnish car?" For from half of the windows gaslight shone out brightly, but the windows along the other side were noticeably dimmer.

Jim gave a small nod and they both dismounted and drew their guns. Making use of the basic telepathy between them that had been born of their long years of partnership, Jim headed toward the baggage car to enter the varnish car from the back while Artie drew nigh the rear platform to enter by the main door.

Each man reached the foot of the stairs leading to his chosen entrance. Each gave a silent count of three, then each stormed the parlor. "All right, freeze!" Artie commanded as both he and Jim burst in from opposite doors and drew a bead on the tall figure just rising from the sofa.

Artie stared in horror, both hearts in his Gallifreyan chest skipping a beat, for the regal man now lifting a hollow-eyed Lily to her feet as well was one of the last persons in whose hands Artie would want to see his wife!

"Let go of her," Jim ordered.

The suave Harlequin merely chuckled. "Why, gentlemen! What a greeting you have given me, when what have I done but enjoyed the charming company of the lovely Mrs Gordon while awaiting your return?" With one hand he held Lily's arm in a firm grasp that angled her body in front of his, while with the other hand he held a strange little gun pointed straight at her head.

"Drop the weapon," said Jim.

"Weapon? This?" Harlequin smiled. "This little bauble? Why, what harm could it possibly do?"

"That's a staser, Jim," said Artie. "One of the deadly firearms known to Gallifrey. Harlequin! Your quarrel is with me. Leave her out of this!"

"But my dear Mr Gordon — or should I say, my dear _Peregrine _— you know as well as I do that Justice will never be served, nor will my beloved wife and child rest quietly in their shared grave, until you have suffered even as I have." He cocked his head and added, "And really, you have only yourself to blame for endangering this dear woman. You _knew _that by marrying and impregnating her, you were playing directly into my hands. The fault for her death lies entirely at your feet, Peregrine. _Captain West, do not!"_

Harlequin turned a glare at Jim, who had been quietly inching closer while the man's attention was focused on Artie. "Do you really think you can fool me, Captain? I, who as Vautrain plumbed the depths and heights of the powers of the human mind, and who now, as Harlequin, have at my disposal the powers of the Time Lord mind? I, who have sent you into the past by the dominion of my will alone? I, who now command your body quite against your will? I, who can do _this?"_

And to the horror of all those watching, particularly Jim himself, the hand in which Jim was holding his revolver was slowly, inexorably, even as he strove to enforce his own will over his own hand — slowly that hand was turning, reversing, swinging the muzzle of the gun around to aim back towards West. Jim grabbed his wrist, struggling resolutely to force his hand back, to turn it away. And the gun just kept moving closer, closer.

"Which shall it be, Captain West? Shall you shoot yourself in the head, or in the heart? Tell me, Peregrine, which shall I choose?" A deep chuckle welled up from Harlequin's throat.

"Jim! No! Stop this, Harlequin! It's me you want. Leave them alone!"

Harlequin only laughed the more, his dark mad eyes locked on James West as he bent his will to move West's gun hand. Artie could only look on helplessly, yelling at their enemy with words that went unheeded.

And from her unenviable position being held in front of the madman, Lily stared back and forth in horror — until with a great sigh, she rolled her eyes up into her head and fainted.

Harlequin was caught by surprise when the woman suddenly collapsed into a dead weight on his arm. He lost his grip on her and she slumped to the floor.

And that wasn't the only thing he lost his grip on. His focus on Captain West evaporated.

Scowling in fury, Harlequin glared down at Mrs Gordon and began swiftly to aim the strange gun at her anew. But fast as he was, James West, now that his actions were his own again, was faster — and so was Artie.

Twin gunshots rang out before Harlequin could pull his own trigger, and the twin impacts flung the tall man back against the sofa behind him. The staser flew from his hand unfired. His face stunned, his eyes blinking, his mouth fallen open in astonishment, Harlequin touched his chest, then stared in wonder at the blood that stained his fingers. He looked up, his eyes locking on Artie's. "You…" he hissed, "you _murderer…!"_ And with that word on his lips, he breathed his last.

Jim swooped down on the staser and tucked it into a jacket pocket. "Artie? Is he dead?"

Artie checked the Time Lord's pulse, then nodded as he sighed and holstered his gun.

"What about regeneration?" Jim persisted.

"Regeneration?" came a voice from the floor. "What is that? He mentioned that word, saying that the staser gun would prevent it."

"Lily!" A magnificent grin lighting his face, Artie lifted up his wife. "Are you all right?"

"Oh, yes. Well, I just had the scare of my lifetime! But I'm fine."

Jim cocked an eyebrow at her. "Lily, did you really faint?"

She laughed and blushed modestly. "Well, I _am _an actress. Even if I am currently semi-retired." And she rested a hand on her belly, on the reason for her semi-retirement.

Artie laughed in relief as well. "And that's a reminder that the terms 'faint' and 'feint' derive from the same root word!" He embraced his wife warmly.

"But, Artemus," she asked again once her husband released her and escorted her to a seat far from the dead body. "What is regeneration and why would the staser gun need to prevent it?"

"Regeneration is one of the abilities of a Time Lord, Lily," Artie explained. "When a Time Lord's body wears out or is dying, a kind of energy can be released which restructures that body into a new one, healing the Time Lord and renewing his — or her — life."

"And we know Vautrain, or Harlequin, regenerated once before and so regained the use of his legs," said Jim. "He'll do it again now, and we need to be ready." Unlike Artie, Jim hadn't holstered his gun. With the revolver in one hand ready to fire it if need be, he produced with his other hand the sonic screwdriver Artie had made for him. Its shrill electronic whine filled the air for a moment as Jim scanned the motionless remains.

But Artie shook his head. "You don't have to do that, Jim," he said. "He's dead; he won't be coming back from this."

"You're sure of that?" said Jim. He checked the reading on the sonic, finding that it agreed with Artie.

"Oh yes," said Artie. "Look at his wounds. When you shot at him, Jim, you aimed for his heart, didn't you? You aimed at the left side of his chest?"

"Yes, I did. Why?"

Artie gave a weary smile. "And I aimed at his other heart, in the right side of his chest. We both hit our marks, and with both his hearts destroyed…" He shook his head. "No, he won't be regenerating."

"Then… then he's gone for good?" said Lily. "No more Harlequin popping in to threaten us: you, and me, and Jim, and our baby?" She laid her hand across the top of her belly.

"That's right, Lil. No more Harlequin. You can rest your mind easy about him."

But even as Lily smiled in blessed relief, Jim frowned at the dead body on the sofa. Something was bothering him, something he didn't want to mention in front of Lily, something indefinable about Harlequin and how the man had died.

Then Jim shook it off and said, "Look, Artie. You take Lily on back to the TARDIS while I get started, uh, cleaning up."

"Oh, right. We should get that done right away. Lily, you can just come rest up for a bit while Jim and I take care of this, all right?" He picked up her knitting bag and passed it to her, then escorted his wife to the TARDIS. "What a relief," he said as they entered the baggage car, "to have this nightmare over with at last!"

But back in the varnish car, Jim wasn't so sure.

…

Life got back to normal, granted that in this case, normal included two Secret Services agents being sent all over the country on a private train to deal with crimes that might well involve the likes of a Dr Loveless or a Count Manzeppi. Add to that a TARDIS and the happy anticipation of a baby soon to be born onboard the train, and normal for them was a far cry from what most people meant when they employed that word.

Nevertheless, life aboard the Wanderer rarely contained a dull moment. Yet while Artie was bubbling over with impending fatherhood, Jim just couldn't shake that feeling that had hit him the night Harlequin died. Something… something vague, indistinct. He held his peace about it though, not wanting to upset Lily.

And so on a certain night as the Wanderer was carrying them westward to California, Jim was seeing to the horses in their stalls in the baggage car while Artie was sitting some little distance away at his lab table studying the staser gun. One of the horses gave a whinny to which the other bobbed his head in reply as Jim fed and watered the pair.

At the table, without even looking up from what he was doing, Artie commented, "Blackjack and Henry say you're worried."

Jim cracked a smile. "I thought _I _was the one who speaks Horse."

Now Artie glanced up. "And I thought _I _was the worrier of this partnership. What's wrong?"

Jim frowned, his eyes narrowed. "That's just it, Artie. I'm not sure if anything _is _wrong. More like… that something is not precisely what it seems."

"Oh? Meaning?"

Jim finished with the horses and came over to sit on the divan the engineer used for a bed. "Meaning I'm still not completely sure we're free of Harlequin at last."

Artie's eyebrows arched. "No? But, Jim, you saw the man die right in front of you!"

"I saw a _Time Lord _die in front of me, yes," he corrected.

"He's dead, Jim. No regeneration, no coming back. Why, you went with me in the TARDIS when I found a star to drop his dead body into. He burned up, ultimate cremation. Harlequin's gone, and gone forever!"

"But he's a time traveler, Artie."

"So?"

"So isn't it possible that we could still run into him, a younger him crossing into our time line when we're older?"

Artie's hands froze and he shot Jim a look of alarm. His mouth suddenly dry, he said, "I, uh, I remember my father telling me it wasn't polite to meet one's fellow Time Lords out of order."

"Somehow I don't think a man like Harlequin cares if he breaks with social conventions," Jim remarked.

Artie sighed and rubbed at his face. "Yeah, he had his own view of justice that ran counter to the kind of justice everyone else accepts."

"Right. So what's to say he wouldn't make up his own standards of right and wrong, politeness and rudeness?"

"And especially when he has vengeance to mete out…" Artie jumped to his feet suddenly and scooped the staser into his pocket. "What's Lily doing?" he asked abruptly.

"The last I saw her, she was settling down to take a nap on one of the sofas in the varnish car," Jim replied.

The next second both men bolted for the door, crossed over the gap between the two cars, and thundered down the corridor to burst through the swinging door into the parlor.

There was Lily peacefully slumbering, one hand resting on her swollen belly as a little ripple of movement ran just under the surface. The agents shared a look between them, then set out to swiftly check the room for anything out of the ordinary.

They found nothing. All was well. No Harlequin, no trouble, no…

Lily groaned. In an instant Artie was at her side. "Anything wrong?" he asked anxiously.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him for a moment, then shook her head. "Oh… no. I… I guess I was just having a strange dream, that's all. I felt like…" She flailed her arms about, trying to find a way to sit up, but failing. Both Jim and Artie came to her rescue, each man taking a hand and easing her up into a sitting position. "Oh, thank you. Thank you both. Sometimes I feel like I swallowed a bowling ball!"

Artie sat at her side and slipped an arm around her shoulders. "And the nightmare?"

She frowned. "Oh, it wasn't a nightmare, not really. I was in a tiny room or… well, it was more like that drawstring purse I have. You know the one? I was inside it, and was struggling to get out, punching at the walls, shoving with my feet. There was just barely enough room in there for me! And then I saw where the drawstrings were, just above my head, holding the purse closed, so I reached for them to open them, only to find that there was a second bag — or I guess it was a bag — completely surrounding me! I could see right through it, but I couldn't get out. And I suppose I was starting to feel a bit panicky, but then I woke up. Isn't that strange?"

"Strange, yes," said Artie. "And yet also… somewhat familiar…"

"Familiar!" Lily exclaimed. "How could that possibly be familiar!"

"Well, it's not impossible that a bit of our child's consciousness might be leaking over into your dreams."

"Leaking over!" Lily stared down at her belly. "Are you sure?"

"It's certainly possible," he said with a shrug and a smile. "One thing about Time Lords is that we're mildly telepathic, and what's true of me is likely also true of our baby. As for the dream," he added, "the womb is something like the drawstring purse you mentioned, don't you think? And I'm sure things are getting rather cramped in there just now. And there's also the fact that she's enclosed not only by the womb but the amniotic sac as well — that's what pops when the waters break — and it is somewhat see-through."

Lily's eyes were like saucers. "I'm… sharing our baby's dreams?"

"Maybe. Let me see." He laid his hands on Lily's belly and bent his head close, eyes shut, listening. Listening for a long time, in fact.

She sighed suddenly. "Oh. I'm sorry, Artie, but that's just not comfortable."

"No, I imagine it isn't. How long have you been having these?"

She frowned in puzzlement. "Having what?"

"Hmm. I suppose they aren't strong enough yet for you to notice them, but the baby feels them. That must be why she had that particular dream."

Jim spoke up. "Are you saying what I think you're saying, Artie?"

He nodded. "Lily's in labor."


	3. Act One, Part Two

**Act One, Part Two**

"Labor?" Lily squeaked. "This is labor? But… but it doesn't feel anything like what I expected. Where's the screaming, the panic, the languishing and fainting?"

He grinned. "Lily my love, you of all people should know how little stage versions of reality resemble real life! Besides, you've only just started. No doubt we have hours and hours of labor ahead of us."

"For me to scream and panic and languish and faint?"

"Well, you're pretty close to the panicking already," Jim observed dryly. And when she shot him a look of vexation, he grinned and crossed to the fireplace to use the speaking tube. "I'll let Orrin know we'll need to stop at the next town to find you a doctor."

…

Early labor was boring. Eventually Lily began to feel the sensation of the pangs, though at first they were little more than a tensing in her belly, easily ignored. For a while she read, and when that palled, she switched to knitting, wanting to finish a little cap to match the booties. Artie did his best to keep Lily's mind distracted from the coming ordeal: chatting, bringing her drinks of water or tea, and occasionally laying his hands on her tummy to monitor her progress.

Jim chose to fade into the background, waiting quietly as the Wanderer chugged on through the night, carrying them to that unknown location of which the child would become a native.

At length the rhythm of the train changed, beginning to slow down, letting loose a few lonesome hoots. Jim went to the speaking tube, blew into it, then listened for a bit. "All right," he said at last. "Thank you, Orrin."

"We've reached a town?" Artie asked as Jim put the speaking tube away.

"Yes. I'll go saddle Blackjack and ride into town to find a doctor for Lily." He smiled at her and added, "It won't be long now."

…

Time was passing, and the pangs would no longer permit themselves to be ignored. For a while Lily would stop knitting to ride one out, then take up the needles again once it was past. But eventually came the point when, with tears in her eyes, she flung the needles from her and exclaimed, "Oh, I can't do this!"

"That's all right," said Artie soothingly. "You don't have to." He took up the knitting, tucked it into the bag with the yarn, and dropped it off on the desk.

"I don't mean the knitting, Artie, I mean… Oh! If you men had to go through what we women do, the human race would have died out long ago! You don't know how it feels!"

"You're right, I don't," he admitted. He came and sat on the sofa with her. "But I can, if you'll permit me."

She stared at him for a moment, then touched his face fondly. "Are you sure you want to?"

"Just lean back against me," he said, and she did so, cautiously at first, then gratefully as a new pang hit. He wrapped his arms around her and rested his head against hers so that he might feel with her what she was feeling, hoping to bear some of the burden of it for her if at all possible.

"Oh, Artie," she groaned softly, "it hurts…"

It did. He kissed the back of her head gently, his hands resting lightly on her swollen belly as he sought some way to ease her through the worst of the crescendoing contraction. "I don't know if this will help, Lil," he murmured into her hair, "but try to keep in mind that it's only muscles working. The lateral muscles have been holding everything closed up tight for the past nine months, and they've gotten very good at it. And now the longitudinal muscles have started to work, pulling against the laterals, working to open things up so that our baby can come out." He paused and added, "I suppose it's something like a game of Tug-of-War."

"And I'm the rope," she replied. "Ah…!" She sagged at last. "That was a long one."

"Long and strong." He glanced at his pocket watch. "And getting closer together." He gave her another kiss. "It won't be much longer now, Sweetheart. The baby will be here soon."

"But where's Jim with the doctor?" she fretted.

"Right here."

They looked up at the door; Jim was just coming in. And behind him...

Behind him was a woman who could have been any age from forty to four thousand. Steel-gray hair wisped out from a severe bun. Half-moon spectacles perched on a beak of a nose. Blue blouse, black skirt, huge carpet bag in hand.

"This," said Jim, "is Mother Hamilton. She delivers all the babies in the area."

"Delivers! I _catch _the babies," she snapped. "Caught more'n half the folks who live all round about these parts. Now." She crossed to the sofa and peered over her glasses. "First baby?"

"I'll be out seeing about the horses, mine and hers," said Jim and he disappeared into the night again.

"Yes," Artie replied to the midwife. "She's our first."

He got a glare in return. "I was askin' _her_. Or are you one of them men who thinks a woman can't talk for herself?" Turning to the pregnant woman, she asked more gently, "What's your name, daughter?"

"Mrs Gordon."

Now she was the one getting a glare. "You don't have a Christian name?"

"Oh! Well, it's Lily. And this is…"

She started to introduce Artemus, but Mother Hamilton waved that away. "...Mr Gordon. I know." She looked around. "Plannin' to have the baby right out here in the middle of everywhere? Or is there somewhere more private?"

"We can move to our stateroom," Artie offered. He got up and helped Lily to her feet, then started to assist her across the room to the corridor. They had traveled no more than four steps though, when Lily gripped Artie's arm hard. She stopped stock still, and he stopped with her, supporting her. Lily's eyes closed again and her head bowed.

The midwife looked at her watch. "You can't walk through it?" she asked.

Lily shook her head. "Maybe... when it's…"

"Tell me when it ends," the old woman said briskly. They all waited.

At length Lily relaxed. "It's over."

Mother Hamilton nodded. "Good long one, that. And when they stop you dead in your tracks like that, you're not long from pushin'. Been timin' 'em? How close together?"

"About three minutes," Artie took the risk of answering.

The old woman clicked her tongue. "Movin' right along then. Let's get on to the bedroom."

For a short walk just down the corridor to the stateroom, it seemed to take forever. Once they arrived, Mother Hamilton started laying out the contents of her carpet bag, all the while giving Artie his orders: "You fetch me all the towels you can find, you hear me? And once you've done that — you got somewhere you can boil water?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Good. Fill your biggest pot all the way up full and boil the water — rollin' boil, mind you! After it's boiled ten minutes, you use some of the water to wash a basin. Don't get the rest of the water dirty doin' it! Once the basin's clean, fill it up with some of the boilin' water and let the water in the basin cool down to lukewarm. Then — and _only _then! — you fetch that basin here to me. You understand me, young man?"

"Yes ma'am." What else could he say? On the other hand, it felt a bit odd to be addressed as "young man."

"Be off with you then," said the midwife, dismissing him from his own room.

Shortly every towel on the train was in Mother Hamilton's custody, and Artie disappeared to see about the water. The midwife flipped a dozen towels out and laid them, one at a time, on the bed, covering the sheets. Then she settled Lily on them.

"What do we need all that water for?" asked Lily.

The old woman gave a _tsk_. "Keeps your young man busy and out of our hair. Baby'll likely be here before the basin. We'll have that water for cleanin' up whatever needs cleanin'. As for the rest — plenty to make coffee or tea with, as needed."

"Oh!" said Lily. And then another contraction hit, and she bowed into it.

...

There was a squall, not loud, like a kitten mewing. Lily began to laugh. "Artie!" she called. "Artemus!"

He hit the doorway, grabbing the frame to yank himself to a halt. Looking in, his eyes lit on the new occupant of the stateroom. "But I don't have the water ready yet!"

"Never mind that," snapped the midwife. She was expertly swaddling the baby in a light blanket.

"Don't you need to, you know, snip that?" Artie pointed at the cord, still trailing between baby and mother.

"All in good time, young man, all in good time," said Mother Hamilton briskly. "It's best to put the babe to breast first so the afterbirth comes easily. You have a shovel, I suppose?"

"Well, yes," Artie replied. "But, er, what do we need a shovel for?"

The midwife fixed him with one of her piercing glances over the tops of her glasses. "Why, to bury the afterbirth with, of course! Unless you were planning to take it away with you!"

"Oh. Yes ma'am, shovel. I'll, uh, go get it." He disappeared in the direction of the baggage car, marveling that, though he was a grown man, a Secret Service agent, and a Time Lord, that little old woman tending to Lily kept reducing him to the level of a scolded child.

"Now," said Mother Hamilton as soon as she'd sent Artie off again. "What's your daughter's name?" She smiled at Lily as she gently laid the infant into her arms.

Lily laughed. "Oh, Artie was right! We have a girl!" The baby nuzzled up against her, its bright dark eyes peering from under heavy lids, its little mouth open as its nose bumped repeatedly against her.

"She's hungry," the midwife commented, "and will want to nurse. Let me help you get her latched on."

…

It was only after the little burial chore was completed and Artie had washed up from it that Mother Hamilton permitted him entrance to his stateroom again. He smiled down at Lily, who was looking both tired and euphoric with that sweet bundle in her arms, and he said, "You're more beautiful, Lil, than you've ever been in all the time I've known you."

He perched himself on the edge of the bed by her side and gave her a small kiss on the cheek before leaning in to peer at the little one. So tiny was their baby! And so bright of eye, looking all around, softly wriggling and cooing.

"Hello, Suzanne," he said, stroking the infant's face gently with a finger. He then glanced at Lily. "That's right, isn't it? Suzanne? Not, er…" He lowered his voice even though he knew Jim was nowhere within earshot. "Not James?"

"Suzanne," Lily confirmed glowingly. "You were right; we have a daughter."

"Well, of course, I was right!" he beamed in reply. "Oh, but look at her! She has your complexion, Lily: all peaches-and-cream. Hey, baby Peaches!"

"Peaches! I thought we were going to call her Suzie!"

"Oh, we will, we will. Or at least, _you _can call her Suzie, and I'll call her Peaches." He grinned and shot Lily a wink.

"Men!" she murmured, rolling her eyes. But then little Suzie started bumping her face against Lily's bosom once more. "Oops! Looks like little Suzie's hungry again!" said Lily.

"Oh. Hungry. I, uh, I should go then." Artie stood to beat a hasty retreat and leave his wife to that womanly pursuit.

And Mother Hamilton followed him out into the corridor to issue him a new set of orders: his wife was not to lift a finger for the next eighty days — no laundry, no cooking, no cleaning, only rest, rest, and more rest while her body healed from its recent great endeavor. Call this her vacation. All she was to do was to rest and recover and love on that baby. "And you, young man! You are not to touch your wife for those eighty days as well!"

"I can't touch her?"

"You know what I mean!" she said, fixing him with her gimlet eye. "She don't need you startin' her on the next baby while she's still got a tiny one."

"But I didn't have in mind to... Wait — eighty days!"

"That's what the Good Book says," retorted the midwife. "Forty days after the birth of a son, and eighty after the birth of a daughter. And not for us to question the wisdom of what the Lord told Moses."

"But...!"

"Eighty days — and I don't mean seventy-nine!"

"But I… Oh…!" Artie looked into the face of that little woman with the eyes of steel and sighed. "Yes ma'am," he agreed. Again, what could he say?

And he was beginning to understand why Jim had disappeared with such alacrity to see to the horses, and why he hadn't yet returned. It must have been quite a ride to the train with someone like Mother Hamilton for company, and Artie didn't for a second envy his partner the job of escorting the woman back home!

…

Life aboard the Wanderer took on a new normal, one that revolved around the needs of little Suzie Gordon. A bassinet took pride of place in the parlor, Artie soon became quite the expert at changing diapers and washing out tiny outfits, and Jim showed himself to be a master at reading the baby's cries to find out whatever it was she wanted done, then doing it.

"You realize," Artie said one day, "as a Time Lord, _I'm _the one here who speaks Baby. I know what Peaches wants too!"

"I know," said Jim. "It's not that different from speaking Horse. But keep in mind that I'm enjoying being Uncle Jim."

For her part, Lily basked in the fact that the men could fathom Suzie's cries, especially whenever she herself couldn't. On the other hand, she did have one skill with the baby that neither Jim nor Artie could duplicate: she alone could feed the little nursling, something that Suzie seemed on occasion to want to do right around the clock! And so, as time passed, Suzie came to rule more and more over the three adults in her little world.

The time passed. One week… Two weeks… Three weeks…


	4. Act One, Part Three

**Act One, Part Three**

Even with the new baby and with Artie's promise that Peaches' first eighty days would be her mother's vacation time, there were still facets of the old normal that remained in their lives, chief among these that the two men were still agents of the United States Secret Service and they still had work to do wherever the president might send them. Thus on a certain day some three weeks after Suzie Gordon's birth, the Wanderer brought them all to Denver. The men consulted maps, Jim outlined a plan, Artie donned a disguise. And with a reminder to Lily to take things easy and enjoy the baby, Artie followed Jim out the door.

Lily established herself in the parlor with a book, sitting comfortably on one of the sofas with her sleeping daughter in her lap and a pitcher of water on a table within arm's reach. She soon found her own eyes drooping and was nigh to falling asleep when a soft tap sounded on the swinging door to the corridor.

Rousing herself, Lily called out, "Yes?"

The door opened only partway. "Begging your pardon, Mrs Gordon…" said a familiar voice.

"Oh, good morning, Orrin," she called to the engineer, being careful to keep her voice low. "It's all right, you may come in. Just be quiet, as Suzie's napping."

He pushed the door open and tiptoed in, his striped twill cap in his hands. "Do you need anything, Mrs Gordon? I've tended to the engine and was going to get some shuteye, but I thought I'd ask first."

Lily smiled at him. She'd grown quite fond of this man who had been pressed into service over a year ago to act as her impromptu bridesmaid! "No, we're fine. Thank you for asking. Go ahead and get your sleep." The poor man often kept even odder hours than Jim and Artie did, and she was sure he needed the rest.

"Thank you, ma'am," he replied. With a tug at his forelock, he slipped from the room again. Moments later she heard the door at the far end of the car open and close, followed by the corresponding door of the baggage car.

Silence fell. Eventually Suzie stirred, making the little grunts that announced she was hungry, and Lily settled her in to nurse. Gradually the baby drifted off to sleep while still eating, a skill Lily always found amazing. Soon Lily as well was starting to drift off. Carefully, lest she awaken Suzie, she rose and slipped her daughter into the bassinet, then laid back down on the sofa to get a little nap.

A noise disturbed her. Lily sat up, blinking, frowning. What on earth had she heard? She checked first on Suzie, but the baby slumbered on. And anyway, it hadn't sounded like the baby. More like… a sharp gust of wind? A whistle? It had been a familiar sound, and yet unfamiliar. She was sure she'd heard it before, but couldn't recall precisely where…

There it was again! Like a whistle, a breathy whistle, and coming from over by the fireplace. What could it…

Oh! "But of course," she murmured to herself. "The speaking tube! Orrin Cobb must be trying to tell me something. But I wonder why he didn't just come tap on the door again?" She went over to the fireplace, found the end of the tube, and blew into it herself, then listened.

Strange. She didn't hear a thing, or at least, she didn't hear a voice. There might have been a slight humming like wind through tree branches, but no words.

She moved the tube back to her mouth. "Hello? Yes, Orrin, I'm listening," she said clearly, then put the tube to her ear once more.

Moments later she held the tube out from her head and stared at it. "What's going on?" she asked herself. "I listen, but no one says anything! Is something wrong?"

She hung up the tube and strode purposefully toward the swinging door, pausing only for a second to assure herself that Suzie was indeed still asleep. What could be bothering Orrin Cobb, Lily wondered as she hurried down the corridor and entered the baggage car.

She found no one there! The divan that Orrin used for his bed was empty, a rumpled blanket and pillow laying across it. But no Orrin. And yet…

And yet she could still hear the sound that had been coming from the speaking tube. It was louder now, and less like a wind in tree branches. No, it was more like… like moaning.

"Miz… Miz Gor…" came a voice that abruptly choked off.

Orrin? Baffled, Lily turned herself about in a full circle. But where was the engineer?

And now something dropped. Automatically she stooped to pick it up. Automatically it registered in her mind that it was Orrin's cap. Automatically she glanced upwards to see where it had fallen from.

Automatically she gasped, then cried out, "Orrin! Oh, _Orrin!"_

He was a mess, his face bruised and swelling. But the unaccountable part was that he was lying on the ceiling. Lying there as if lying on the divan, as if gravity didn't matter, as if this were a nightmare and Lily needed to wake up.

Behind her the door opened, and before her the engineer suddenly plummeted to land at her feet. She nearly shrieked, but composed herself and was about to kneel and check on poor Mr Cobb when a voice from behind her froze the marrow in her bones.

"Ah, Mrs Gordon! How good to see you again! And how delightful to meet this newest member of the Gordon family!"

She whirled and stared at the tall figure with the tiny bundle held casually in the crook of one arm. He smiled as regally as ever as he crooked his other arm and offered it to Lily. "Your daughter has graciously assented to accept the hospitality of my home, Mrs Gordon. Surely you do not wish her to accompany me unchaperoned."

A nightmare. Oh, let this be a nightmare! Desperately Lily took hold of one hand with the other, grasped a small section of skin, and pinched as hard as she could.

The tall figure continued to smile and offer his elbow as Lily realized with sinking heart that she was already fully awake.

**End of Act One**


	5. Act Two, Part One

**Act Two, Part One**

"Long day," Jim commented as he and Artie rode back to the railroad yards.

"Yes, and such a fruitful one!" Artie grumbled at his side.

"You too, huh?" Jim had learned precious little in this first day of the new investigation, and from Artie's heavy sarcasm, apparently he wasn't the only one. "Well, maybe tomorrow will be better. And in the meantime, there's Suzie to entertain." That, he was sure, would cheer Artie up.

And in fact the thought of his baby daughter did light a smile on Artie's face. "Oh, hey!" he grinned. "You think Peaches will recognize her dear ol' dad under all this disguise?"

Jim chuckled at his partner's lightning switch of mood. "Why don't you go on in and see while I take the horses over to the livery stable?"

"All right, you're on!" Artie dismounted, grabbed his saddle bags, and started for the varnish car of their train.

As Jim returned from the livery stable, he heard his name being called in a tone of voice that put him instantly on the alert. There was Artie, leaning out from the sliding door of the baggage car, his face pale even under the makeup. "Jim! Hurry!"

Jim hurried, charging up the ramp Artie was just lowering for him. "What's wrong?"

Artie jerked his head toward something lying on the baggage car floor. "I didn't see the girls in the parlor nor in our stateroom, so I came over here and found…"

It was an appalling sight. Orrin Cobb lay on his back in the middle of the floor, unconscious, his face bruised and swelling, his body twisted into a position that looked at the least painful, and at the most impossible.

Swiftly Jim knelt at his side. "What could have happened to him?"

"I don't know," said Artie. "But if he's like this…"

Jim glanced up. Even without their many years of being friends and partners he would have known how that sentence ended. If Orrin was like this, what of Lily and baby Suzanne? "They must have taken refuge in the TARDIS," Jim said firmly. "You go talk to them. I'll tend to Orrin."

Still ashen, Artie hurried to the tall brown cabinet in the corner and fumbled his key into the lock, then rushed inside calling out his wife's name.

Meanwhile, Jim slipped from an inside pocket that bit of Gallifreyan technology Artie had built for him some time back. He set it for diagnostic, and an electronic whine filled the air as he used the sonic screwdriver to scan Orrin, glad that the engineer wasn't awake to ask awkward questions. Jim frowned as he read off the results: three cracked ribs, two cracked vertebrae, a broken jaw, as well as a laundry list of major and minor injuries to the man's face and internal organs. "This isn't good," he called to his partner.

"No, it isn't," Artie replied as he stepped from the cabinet door. "There's no sign of anyone inside the TARDIS. I checked Rosalind's memory though, and she has a recording of what went on here in the baggage car." He shook his head; the rest of him was already shaking. "Jim, you were right. You were right and I was wrong. He _did _cross the time lines!"

"He?" Jim leapt up and strode for the TARDIS to view the recording, handing off the sonic as he passed Artie, who was hurrying out into the baggage car. And now as each man saw what the other had just been studying, a definite chill settled into each heart.

On the monitor at the main console of the TARDIS Jim watched the scene unfold. Orrin entered the baggage car from the door to the varnish car, fetched out his pillow and blanket, then laid down on the divan, his cap pulled over his face to block out the daylight shining in through the windows. The soft sound of the man's snoring had no sooner begun when abruptly his body started thrashing, his head tossing violently back and forth, his cheeks deforming as if an unseen hand was striking him again and again and again. Orrin awoke and let out a yelp of both pain and shock at the impossible attack. And then the man was yanked bodily from his couch by those invisible hands and flung up to the ceiling, there to stick fast, half conscious, moaning, stupefied.

And yet Orrin was still apparently completely alone in the room.

Moments later the door opened and Lily walked in. She stared at first in bewilderment at the empty bed, then turned herself in a complete circle, no doubt looking for the engineer.

From the ceiling he groaned and his hat dropped.

Now she saw him! And as the door behind Lily opened again, Orrin plummeted from the ceiling to land at Lily's feet. Jim, however, paid no attention to the images of the woman and the engineer anymore, for his eyes were drawn to the tall figure framed in the doorway.

Vautrain. Harlequin. Their old enemy, the man he and Artie had shot dead in the varnish car a couple of months before, was now smiling in the baggage car, speaking in his wonted cultured, all-too-reasonable tones to Lily. And in his arms he held little Suzie Gordon.

The hospitality of his home? What did Harlequin mean by the baby assenting to accept the hospitality of his home, and by inviting Lily to act as the child's chaperone?

"He's taken them," Jim murmured. "His home — presumably that's his TARDIS, the one that was blowing up around Vautrain's ears when we last saw it. Apparently he's repaired it, but where is it now? Where has he taken them?"

On the monitor, Lily, looking sick and with tears sliding down her cheeks, crossed to Harlequin's side and slipped her arm through his. "A wise choice, Mrs Gordon," the man's smooth voice said. "But before we go, I must leave a missive for your husband." He closed his eyes for a moment, his body tensing with effort, then sighed and added, "Ah, that is done! Shall we go, my dears?"

Lily's voice was cut off right in the middle of the word, "No!" as, with a puff of smoke, Harlequin and his two captives vanished into thin air.

And there the playback ended. Jim slapped at a switch to blank the screen, then charged for the door. "He's left you a message, Artie."

"I know! I'm searching!" Artie was going through the drawers and shelves of the lab area, checking each one quickly and thoroughly. "Where could he have put it? The recording didn't show anything appearing."

"Somewhere obvious, so we find it quickly? Or somewhere obscure, the last place we would think to look? Which would he do? How does his mind work?" said Jim, joining in the search. While Artie was hunting through the drawers in his usual fashion, peering and feeling inside and underneath, then sliding the drawer closed again in nearly undisturbed condition, Jim was engaging in his own usual form, yanking the drawers from their runners completely, then dumping the contents onto the floor to check the underside.

The room was soon a mess, and no sign of the promised missive.

Artie sighed, thumped at his nose, then glanced at Orrin still unconscious on the floor and shook his head. "We need to see about him as well," he said. He snatched up Jim's sonic from where he'd dropped it off on the lab table and took another look at the readout. "Ok, the bones I can fuse using the sonic screwdriver, but for the rest he'll need to be hospitalized. Jim, would you look in the storage cabinets just inside the TARDIS and find a pair of anti-gravs to carry him with?"

"Sure," said Jim and hurried to do just that. "But what hospital are we going to take him to? I doubt if Denver has any place that can deal with the sort of injuries Orrin has." As he returned with the anti-gravity devices, the familiar whine of the sonic made further conversation impracticable for a while.

At length Artie finished the first step in Orrin's recovery and turned off the sonic, then passed it back to Jim. "What hospital, you say? Why, good ol' St Rosalind's, right there behind you!" He waved a hand at the TARDIS. "We'll tuck him into a bed in the sick bay and let Rosalind work on him, keeping him in a coma while he heals."

"Oh, to avoid having to explain a few things to him?"

"Well, that too. Once he's better, we can just install him here on his divan again and tell him he's recovered," said Artie as he and Jim placed the anti-gravs under the engineer's shoulders and knees, then turned them on.

"Mm. And what do we say when he asks about how he came to be injured?" Jim asked as the anti-gravs floated Orrin into the TARDIS.

"Uh… Accident? He fell off the engine or something?" They passed between the console and a grouping of chairs that made for a cozy parlor there within the console room, then took Orrin on through the interior door and down the branching corridors of the TARDIS, searching for the current location of the sick bay.

"Oh? And what about any memories he might have of groaning on the ceiling?"

"Oh, that's easy: nightmares. Ah, here we are." Artie opened the door and they escorted the man in to hover him over the nearest bed.

"Artie, you have an answer for everything. And sometimes your answers are even true."

Artie chuckled. "Well, let's get Orrin comfortable. He's gonna be here for a while." They lowered the man onto the bed, switched off the anti-gravs, then set the two devices aside by the door to be taken back to the storage cabinet whenever one of them next returned to the main console room. Working together, Artie rolled Orrin onto his side so that Jim could slip the engineer's jacket off one arm. Then they rolled him to the other side to pull the jacket off completely. Jim dropped the jacket onto a countertop, then rounded the bed to remove Orrin's boots.

"Sleeps with his boots on, huh?" Artie commented. He crossed to a locked glass-doored cabinet, opened it, and began rummaging through vials of medicine, checking the labels, then putting back all but a couple of them. He selected as well a pair of syringes.

"Hey, Artie."

"Yeah, Jim?"

"You remember how I first met Harlequin, don't you?"

"Back when he was still Col Vautrain? Well, I wasn't actually present at the time, but I know he'd been injured in the Battle of Vicksburg, and when you saw him with his, er, legs blown off, you stopped and rendered aid."

"Mm-hmm. And you remember what I said just now, a few minutes ago, when I was trying to reason out whether Harlequin would hide that message somewhere obvious or somewhere obscure?"

"Well, sure, Jim! You were wondering how his mind works, and…" Artie turned at this point, to see Jim holding one of the engineer's work boots in his hand. Jim looked up from the boot to meet Artie's eyes, then upended the boot.

A single piece of paper, its four corners folded up and sealed with a blob of wax, fluttered out of the boot. Artie gaped, then dove for the note.

"He put it on the injured man," said Jim.

"Yeah. On the injured man, knowing that we would undoubtedly render him aid!" He looked at the paper in his hand, at his own name inscribed across the front, then flipped it over, ready to break the circle of wax that sealed it shut.

He paused a second. "Circular Gallifreyan."

"Hmm?"

"Sealed as with a signet ring. The design is his own name written in circular Gallifreyan."

Jim glanced at it. "If that's how the message inside is written as well, he was ensuring only you would be able read it."

Artie broke the seal and flattened out the letter. Indeed, the interior was filled with circles of all sizes, each festooned with lines and dots and arcs within and without.

Jim waited patiently, watching Artie's face as he read the letter until at last he gave a snort and crumpled it in his fist.

"Well?"

"Oh, exactly what we should have expected from him! Revenge, revenge, revenge, blah, blah, blah!"

"Nothing useful in it?"

Artie glanced over the paper, giving the highlights. "He has my wife and daughter, he expects us to come to their rescue, and once we arrive, it will be too late, for we'll be greeted by the sight of their deaths."

"_Once _we arrive. Meaning he won't kill them before that, correct?"

"No doubt. After all, that time he was going to kill my mother, he waited until I actually came into the room and saw him holding her, then gave me a big monologue about how he was going to pay me back in kind for what I'd done to his wife."

"And that other time, when he deduced that he had your cousin in his clutches," Jim reminded him.

"Yeah, that's right! He'd already knocked me unconscious, but then he revived me so I could be his captive audience — and that was while I was still human and hadn't remembered anything about the lab accident that killed his expectant wife." Artie took a deep breath and shook his head. "Oh, he's got a flair for the dramatic, he does!"

"That could be turned against him."

"You're right, it could. First though, we'll need to find him." Artie glanced at the comatose engineer. "And first before that, I need to finish getting him squared away."

"All right. You do that, and I'll start searching for Vau… for Harlequin, and for wherever he may have taken your girls."


	6. Act Two, Part Two

**Act Two, Part Two**

"Where are we?" demanded a very angry Lily.

The elegantly suave man bowed and spread out the arm that was not still carrying the sleeping baby. "Why, in my home as promised, Mrs Gordon! Is it not delightful?"

It was certainly… well, opulent was the first word that popped to Lily's mind. Rich furnishings surrounded her in a room that was reminiscent of the console room in Artie's TARDIS. Tapestries lined some of the twelve walls, airy chairs and tables stood on a plush oriental carpet, a grand piano topped with a candelabra and a bronze bust of Mozart graced one corner.

Lily looked the man right in the eye, lifted her stubborn chin, and replied, "No, it isn't!"

"Not delightful? Ah, I am _crushed!" _he intoned. "Tell me, dear lady, in what way may I make this TT capsule of mine more to your liking?"

"By removing me and my daughter from it and returning us to the Wanderer!"

He grinned, a rich chuckle rumbling up from deep within his soul. "Oh, but Mr Gordon has chosen for himself a woman of spirit! How curious then that when we met once before, you escaped my grasp by, ah, _fainting_. Hmm?" He regarded her with his sharp dark eyes. "You are an actress indeed, my dear. I shall be forewarned henceforth."

And Lily, remembering the occasion to which he had referred, frowned. "You died. I fainted, and they shot you. You were dead. How are you alive now?"

He smiled broadly, again chuckling. "Ah, but that would be _telling_. And for the moment, wouldn't you prefer to…?"

Whatever question he had been about to ask was drowned out by a sudden howl.

"Suzie!" Lily Gordon strode toward the kidnapper, her eyes on her daughter, only to find that, with a lift of Harlequin's hand in her direction, she suddenly could not move, not even an eyelash.

"Oh no, Mrs Gordon, not a step closer! The child is in my possession, and thus shall she stay!"

"But she's crying! She wants something! And most likely what she wants is me!"

"I am a Time Lord, Mrs Gordon. Do not try to trick me. I understand the language of babies fluently, and what this one wants is…" He stopped abruptly, sniffed the air, then said swiftly, "…her mother to change her. Do so at once." He held out the baby, and suddenly in the console room of the TT capsule with them was Suzie's own bassinet from the Wanderer, along with enough diapers, powder, and other such supplies to keep the infant dry, comfortable, and blissfully smell-free for many weeks to come.

…

"All right," said Artie, "that's got Orrin squared away." He crossed from the inner doors of his TARDIS to one of the storage cabinets here in the console room and put the anti-gravs away. "He's stabilized and under an isolation tent, hooked up to various monitors for Rosalind to fine-tune the medications being dripped into his veins. And for now, that's the best I can do for him." He joined Jim at the main console and glanced at the text rapidly scrolling over the monitor screen. "Find anything?"

"I went over every inch of the Wanderer inside and out with both visual inspection and the sonic screwdriver, and now Rosalind's analyzing my scans." He nodded at his sonic, standing upright in a port on the console. "I didn't spot anything out of the ordinary, but I'm hoping she will. Oh, and speaking of not spotting things, did anything strike you as odd about Suzie's bassinet when you first came into the varnish car?"

Artie frowned for a second, then shook his head. "No, nothing. Well, other than the fact that she wasn't in it. Why, what's wrong with it?"

"Mm," said Jim. "That's what I thought, since I figured you would have mentioned it to me earlier."

"Mentioned what, Jim?"

"That the bassinet is gone."

Artie blinked. "Gone! What do you mean, gone? It was… it was right there!" He started toward the door. "It can't be gone! I would have noticed!"

"Well, it was missing when I was making my scans just now. I presume Vautrain decided he needed it and scooped it up sometime between when you were last in the parlor and when I went in there a few minutes ago."

Artie stormed on out of the TARDIS. Moments later he was back, a furious scowl on his face. "Not only is the bassinet missing, but so are all the diapers and powders and the like. The clothes are still here, but who knows how soon he'll… he'll just _steal _those as well, taking whatever he discovers he needs from right under our noses, whenever he pleases? That…" His eyes lit up as he made another lightning change of mood. "That could work to our advantage!"

"What do you have in mind?" Jim asked as Artie hurried back to the storage cabinets.

"I have a few… oh, where are they? A few little… aha!" He brought a small box over to the main console, set it down, then pulled out his own sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the box. Once the whine switched off again, he said, "Ok, that's got 'em all registered in the sonic's memory." He lifted something out of the box and laid it on his palm. It was flat and round and looked very much like an ordinary button, right down to the set of four holes in the middle.

Jim picked it up and looked at it. "What is it?"

"A little tracking device. Passive device, meaning it doesn't need energy to run. The special chemical compound inside it naturally emits a low-level spatiotemporal signal which the sonics — and Rosalind herself — will be able to pinpoint."

"Ah. And what are you going to do with them?" Jim handed back the button.

"Go plant a few in the rest of Peaches' and Lily's clothing, in case our ol' buddy decides to help himself to more of their belongings." He went back to the storage cabinet, found a little sewing kit, and said, "Be right back."

Jim continued to read off the information Rosalind was gleaning from his sonic's scans. It was sparse at best, and the question again invaded Jim's mind: home — what would Vautrain count as his home?

Artie returned a few minutes later to report, "All right, I stitched a button to every one of Peaches' outfits and most of Lily's as well, along with adding one to the inside of Lily's knitting bag. If Harlequin helps himself to any of those items, we may just be able to get a fix on him."

"Good," said Jim, and asked of Artie the question that had been floating through his mind.

"Hmm. Home. Well, of course when I was young, my father worked for Harlequin — Father was one of the best biomechanics on Gallifrey, and Prof Harlequin invited us to visit him at home often, boasting about how valuable Father's contributions were in the field of basic research into higher level cloning." He paused, lost in the reminiscence for a moment, then sighed. "Not that it's likely _that's _what he meant by 'home,' of course. According to what the Doctor told us, Gallifrey isn't there anymore."

"Right. So what else could he mean? I can think of three places."

"Yeah," said Artie. "The place you tracked Vautrain to after he and his niece vanished with me from that theater, back when he was still human."

"Live Oak Manor, just outside Vicksburg."

"Or the place we met him next, after he became a Time Lord again."

"His desert hideaway, when we met him, the Doctor, and his companion your cousin."

Artie gave a brief smile and a laugh at the thought of little Abi the fangirl who had inadvertently spilled the beans about his upcoming marriage to Lily. "And then the third place I can think of that he might call home is his own TARDIS."

"Wherever that is."

"Yeah. Not to mention, _when_ever. Although…"

"Although?"

Artie's eyebrows knitted. "He _wants _to be found. He wants us to figure out where he's taken them, because he specifically wants us — me — to show up just in time to see him…" His breathing quickened, the muscles of his chest constricting. "…see him take the two ladies who mean more to me than my own life and…"

"We'll stop him," said Jim.

"We _have _to, I know. It's just… How? How do we defeat someone who's essentially an insane god? I mean, twice before — twice! — we thought he was dead — the second time, we even threw his body into a star to burn up! — and yet he's back again. He…" In exasperation he flung up his hands.

"He crossed the time lines," said Jim. "You said so yourself. This is a younger Vautrain."

"Is he? Did he?" Artie's hands danced over the TARDIS console, and now the playback of that dreadful scene in the baggage car sprang to life again on the monitor.

Abruptly he paused it, ran it back, and played a certain segment over, then over and over in a loop. That voice, that infuriatingly civil voice, spilled from the speakers. _"Ah, Mrs Gordon! How good to see you again!… Ah, Mrs Gordon! How good to see you again!… Ah, Mrs Gordon! How good to…"_

"…'to see you again!' " growled Artie, angrily pausing the playback. "…'to see you _again!_' Jim, he's not talking like he's never met her before, yet the first time he ever laid eyes on Lily, and the only time she'd ever met him before, was a few months back when he took her hostage right there in the varnish car."

Jim leaned closer, studying the screen and the haughty features of their suave enemy smirking there. "But how can that be possible? He was absolutely dead, unable to regenerate. We shot him through both hearts."

"I know. He was as dead as a Time Lord can be, as dead as if we'd shot him with…" He snapped his fingers. "Staser! Where'd I put that staser?" He bolted through the door into the interior of the TARDIS, then returned a few minutes later, the slick little weapon in his hands.

"This is what he was threatening to use on us all that day," said Artie. He passed it to Jim.

"A Gallifreyan weapon, you said, one of the most deadly known," Jim remarked, studying the little thing.

"Mm-hmm. It was invented specifically to interfere with the ability to regenerate. A solid hit from a staser can unquestionably kill a Time Lord, once and for all, with no hope of him ever coming…" He gave a small snort. "…back."

"So if we'd been able to use this against him that day, he wouldn't be here now," said Jim.

"Yes. No. Maybe." Artie shook his head. "I don't know! A staser should kill him once and for all, yes, but so should the way we already killed him!" He ran his fingers through his hair, then thumped at his nose with a forefinger. "Here's the problem, Jim: He has the advantage over me! He has Lily and Suzie, and whatever plans he's made as well, leaving me to react, react, react, and possibly fall into any number of traps he's laid. And on top of that, he grew up on Gallifrey; I didn't. He completed his studies at the Academy and earned the degree of professor; I was driven from the Academy by his madness well before I completed any course of study, and have only vague memories of my people's technology." He gave a bitter crooked smile. "I may be a grown man on the outside, but on the inside, I'm still a twelve-year-old schoolboy, not really deserving of the title of Time Lord. And he knows it."

Jim smiled. "Maybe. But you have all those years of acting behind you, and tons of experience in getting in and out of tight scrapes, so in those ways, _you _have the advantage on him. And besides…"

"Besides?"

Now Jim grinned broadly. "You've got me on your side. Anyone who goes up against you is going against me as well." And with fire in his eye, Jim added, "He doesn't know what he let himself in for when he went after the family of Artemus Gordon!"

Artie gave a wan smile in return. "Because part of that family is James West. Thanks, Jim."

Jim gave his best buddy a light punch on the arm, then tucked the staser away in a pocket and turned again to the console. "First order of business, then, is to find Harlequin."

Artie nodded. "Right." And both men bent their heads over the console to begin their search.


	7. Act Two, Part Three

**Act Two, Part Three**

"Where are we?" Lily demanded.

Her suave captor chuckled. "Where indeed?" he said. "Where… and _when?"_

"Oh, don't think you can impress me!" she retorted. "I've traveled in our TARDIS plenty of times. I know you've taken us somewhere else — some_when_ else as well — to lead Artemus on a merry chase." She waved a hand at the column of the time rotor rising high above the central console. "It's not moving anymore, so we've stopped. I want to know where we are now."

He regarded her with some amusement; his expression reminded her unflatteringly of the way a farmer might regard a particularly clever pig. "Very well, Mrs Gordon," he said at last. "Behold!" He sprang his fingers wide, and the TARDIS doors opened.

"There's a lever for that," she muttered as she crossed to baby Suzie's bassinet. Before she could check on the baby to make sure she was still sleeping peacefully, Harlequin swooped in ahead of her and scooped the baby up.

"Ah-ah-ah, Mrs Gordon! _I _shall take her!"

Lily gaped at him. "You idiot! I wasn't going to disturb her. I just wanted to look in on her. And now you've woken her up!"

Sure enough, the startled infant's mouth flew open and she began to wail.

"Hush!" Harlequin commanded. He glowered at the child in his arms. "Be silent!"

Like that worked. Lily too was glowering, her fists planted firmly on her hips. "You don't have the first clue in the world how to treat a baby, do you? One of the very first things a new parent learns is if the baby is sleeping, you let her sleep!"

Harlequin, still scowling, tried to bring his enormous mental powers to bear upon the child to quell her crying, only to find that the very sound he was attempting to bring to an end was working against him. Her screeches were like sharp arrows piercing his brain, making it impossible for him to concentrate.

With an inarticulate snarl, he thrust the baby into her mother's arms. "Silence her!" he demanded.

Lily wrapped the baby close in her arms, cooing at her, bouncing her gently, speaking lovingly to her. Suzie quickly settled down from furious caterwauling to sniffling sobs, but she was still crying.

"You," said Harlequin with a hint of smug triumph in his voice, "are no better at this than I."

"She's hungry," Lily countered. "And that's something you can't take care of for her at all."

She was pleased to see the sudden frozen look on his face, the flash of crimson rising across his cheeks. Oh, how embarrassed men always seemed to become whenever they thought of the method by which a mother feeds her baby! And if only _this _man would be embarrassed enough to leave her and Suzie alone for a bit… Hmm, Lily might be able to take advantage of that. She had become very good friends with her husband's TARDIS; she'd learned how to fly Rosalind, and could Harlequin's TARDIS be much different? All she needed was for her captor to leave her alone here to nurse the baby, and…

"Noel?" A voice sounded from the open door, and a young woman entered, her eyes wary, her shoulders hunched. "Noel, you've come back?"

"Indeed I have, Amanda my dear!" Harlequin, that smug smile of triumph on his face again, swept toward the newcomer and took her by the upper arm. "Come and meet our guests!" He led her — and none too gently, either — over to where Lily was still standing with the tearful Suzie in her arms, soothing the baby with a series of jiggling motions, bouncing and patting her, murmuring little nonsense words, doing what Lily had come to think of as the baby dance.

"These," said Harlequin with a grand sweeping gesture of his arm, "are Mrs Gordon and her lovely daughter. They will be staying with us. Permanently."

The newcomer gave a watery smile and shot a glance at Harlequin before saying haltingly, "How… how do you do, Mrs Gordon?"

"And this…" Harlequin now turned to Lily to complete the introductions. "…is Amanda Vautrain. My wife."

And so pleased with that status too! Lily thought as she saw the look that flitted over the woman's face. Lily shifted the baby to one arm to hold out a hand. Amanda took it, her own grip as limp as a dead fish.

"And now, my dear, please escort our guests to the room I made ready for them."

Amanda started. "Oh, but…!"

"At once, my dear. I have things to do, and the child needs feeding."

"Y… yes, Noel." She nodded to Lily. "Follow me."

…

In Artie's TARDIS in the corner of the baggage car, things were quiet. Artie had set up a second monitor on the main console, and he was now double-checking the scans Jim had taken earlier, searching for anything of use, while Jim was using the other monitor to do something he wouldn't have imagined was possible. Rosalind, as a TARDIS, was able to tap into technology that wouldn't exist yet for over a century into the future, and Jim was now doing something Artie told him was called "surfing the web." There was a bit of a learning curve involved, but Jim was nothing if not a quick study. He swiftly discovered search engines, and was now scrolling through the results of the search term Vautrain.

His eyes lit up. "Aha! Artie, I've found something. Look at this, an article about..."

"Oh? What do you have?" Artie was just rounding the console to peer at Jim's monitor when the screen blanked, then came up again showing the scene in the baggage car just outside the closed TARDIS doors. A voice rang through the speakers.

"Jim? Artemus?" An older gentleman was standing in the baggage car, a frown on his face, his fists on his hips. Scowling, he muttered to himself, "Where can they be? No one's on the train, no one answered the telegraph. I expected a report from them on today's initial investigation, and if that pair doesn't turn up expeditiously, there's going to be Hell to pay!" He glared at the uninhabited room, then turned on his heels and stalked back toward the varnish car.

"Uh-oh, Col Richmond's on the war path!" said Artie.

"We've got to go out there and make that report," said Jim.

"Right." Artie sighed. "Right. Let's go." He grabbed his jacket and shrugged it on.

"I can make the report alone," said Jim. "You stay here and keep searching. There's that webpage I just found that I was about to show you. I think you'll find it interesting."

Artie paused, then shook his head. "No. No, you saw how angry Col Richmond looked just now. It's going take both of us to appease him." He headed for the door, then added, "Besides, we have a time machine. Much as I want to be already rushing to Lily and Suzie's rescue, if we can't leave right away, we can at least arrive whenever we want."

Jim nodded and they locked up the TARDIS , then headed for the varnish car to face the music.

While behind them, as yet unseen, a light on the TARDIS console started to flash.

**End of Act Two**


	8. Act Three, Part One

**Act Three, Part One**

Lily was disappointed. So much for possibly getting an opportunity to fly off in Harlequin's TARDIS! Amanda Vautrain had led her out of the TT capsule — a glance back had shown Lily it looked like a ornamental lacquered cabinet from the outside — and through the rooms of what appeared to be a fine old Southern plantation house. As they headed up the stairs, Lily asked, "Where are we?"

Dully Amanda answered, "Welcome to Live Oak Manor, Mrs Gordon."

"Please, call me Lily," she invited cordially. "But… Live Oak? Wasn't it destroyed?"

Amanda nodded as they reached the lower landing and continued left through a doorway and on down the hallway. "Destroyed, yes, and rebuilt anew. Noel's idea, of course. He seemed to think it was… necessary. Essential. This house, the furnishings, everything exactly as it was before. And all waiting for you." She reached a door and opened it.

"For me?" Lily echoed as she followed the woman into a finely appointed bedroom.

"For all of you. Noel said the day would come when Captain West and Peregrine Gordon would return, and the house must needs be ready against that day — which apparently is today." She closed the door behind them, then spread her hands and gestured at the beautiful room in which they stood. "He made this ready especially for you."

Lily looked around, taking in the opulent antebellum furnishings, and also the fact that Suzie's bassinet and all the other items Harlequin had pilfered from the Wanderer were already here. "Hmph," she said. "All the comforts of home! Well, I suppose it's pretty enough — for a prison cell."

Amanda fixed her with the first sharp look her otherwise dull demeanor had yet mustered. "Isn't it though?" she murmured.

"Then you agree," Lily pressed on. "He intends to keep me and my daughter prisoner here."

"For the rest of your lives, yes." Amanda settled down on the chair before the vanity and added, "Welcome to the club."

Lily frowned. "You're a prisoner too?"

Amanda shrugged. "I might as well be. He brought us here… Do you even know where here is? Or I should say, when?"

"When? No. Then he did bring us away through time?" Baby Suzie was beginning to fuss again, and Lily perched on the edge of the bed alongside her knitting bag and tucked her daughter close to feed her.

"Yes. The year is 2013. Noel thought it would be… I don't know — appropriate? amusing? — to rebuild Live Oak Manor in the sesquicentennial year of the Battle of Vicksburg. That's when we are now. All of us plucked up out of our own proper time and cast down here in a world so different, we might as well be on some planet out in space!"

"You're from our time too? The eighteen hundreds?"

"Oh, yes. I'm the same Amanda Vautrain that Captain West and your husband met all those many years ago."

Lily frowned. "But… but Amanda Vautrain was… was Col Vautrain's _niece_, wasn't she? Not his wife!"

The woman sighed and gave a shrug. "Niece. Wife. What difference does it make? It was always and ever in name only." She glanced at Lily. "I suppose I ought to explain. My name, my original name, was Amanda Pilgrim, and Live Oak Manor was my home. I lived there — here — with my father, Ambrose Pilgrim. Mother passed away when I was quite small, but Papa and I were happy enough together back then. Back in the days before Noel entered our lives." A nostalgic gleam lit her eyes as she gazed off into the past.

"Well, on a certain day some of the field hands came up to the house bearing an unconscious man. No one knew who he was nor where he'd come from. Papa sent for a doctor and went through the man's pockets, finding on him a slip of paper that had the name Noel Bartley Vautrain written on the one side, and the message 'Find Peregrine' on the other. Well, I expect you know that the name Pilgrim comes from the word peregrine."

"Meaning wanderer, yes."

Amanda nodded. "So Papa wondered if the Peregrine in the note might be himself. Well, the doctor came and went; the unconscious man awoke and gradually recovered from whatever it was that had ailed him to start with — we never did find out what. Papa treated him as an honored guest, calling him by the name that was on that paper. And they were soon fast friends, so much so that Papa spoke of Noel as being the brother he'd never had. He encouraged me to consider Noel my uncle, which I did." Again the light of nostalgia lit her eyes. "Back then, before the War — oh, Noel was a different man then! Sweet, gentle, kind, in every way a gentleman. I loved him. I've always loved him. I suppose I still do, even with…" She glanced at Lily. "Even with what he became."

"The War changed him," Lily prompted.

Amanda gave a ragged laugh. "Oh, indeed! The War changed everything. When it started, when Mississippi seceded from the Union, Papa and Noel both volunteered for the Confederate army, and being gentlemen, they each received a commission as an officer." Her eyes misted over as she added, "Papa… died at Shiloh leading his men. The terms of his will named Noel as my guardian, with Live Oak Manor in his hands to tend it for me. You understand."

Lily nodded. Yes, it was quite common when a woman was the only heir for her property to be administered by a man on her behalf instead of by herself directly.

"Well, after that came the Battle of Vicksburg. You know that story, I suppose. How Noel was injured in that battle, how he lost his legs but not his life because Captain West happened upon him and applied tourniquets."

"Yes."

"Noel recovered — except he didn't. It was shortly after that that he changed my last name to his. Made it easier, he said. He and Papa had been like brothers, and it didn't make sense if his brother's daughter didn't carry the same family name. I went along with it, though I didn't see why. Later, much later, I realized he'd been planning revenge all along, and that he'd changed my name so that no one, particularly Captain West, would bat an eye at the relationship between Noel and me."

"As his niece," said Lily.

"Yes. Had I still been Amanda Pilgrim, Captain West might have realized there was at least one lie going on, and been on his guard against Noel from the start." She was silent for a bit, her fingers twisting little knots in her skirt. "Well, I suppose too that you know what happened after Noel lost the use of his legs, how that led to the loss of his mind, and from there to his… what do you call it? The _evil _to which he set himself, learning to use his mind to, to do what men ought not do, remaking himself into, into a god! A god of evil, using the powers of his mind to move things, twist things, his only goal revenge on a man who'd tried to _help _him, to do him good by saving his life!"

"Yes. Yes, Artie and Jim told me of that whole crazy adventure, of Vautrain taking them back in time to try to assassinate General Grant during the battle."

Amanda nodded. "He took them back in time, but only they returned. And returned to find my beloved Live Oak Manor in flames, while Noel… They told me he was inside, there in the library as the house was burning down." A tear slid down her cheek. "I thought he was dead."

"_They _thought he was dead too," Lily assured her. "They wouldn't have left him behind if they hadn't thought there was no hope. In fact, he was trapped inside the house under a beam they couldn't move. He _told _them to go."

She nodded. "That's what they told me as well, that night as we watched the house burn to the ground. And I believed them. Noel was dead."

"That's what everyone thought, until he turned up alive again, and walking."

Amanda laughed. "Yes, I'm sure they were as shocked as I was! Years had passed. I had made a new life for myself. And then one day there he was. Walked right into my life, claiming to be Noel's twin brother. _Joel _Vautrain."

"Oh?"

Amanda shrugged. "I'm not sure if he thought he could fool me, or that I wouldn't believe it was really him alive again, or just what he was up to. But I figured out soon enough that he was really Noel. For one thing, he kept talking vengeance again, couching it of course in terms of taking revenge on the men who had destroyed his brother. But he could move things with his mind the same as Noel did, and why would his brother have developed such an ability? No, I went to him and told him to his face I knew who he was. More the fool me!"

"What did he do?"

"He laughed as if I'd just done an amazing trick! 'Well, there's something inside that head of yours besides pudding!' he exclaimed. And as I now knew the truth of who he was, he then let me in on the truth of _what _he was, all this…" She waved a hand. "…_Time Lord _business, and why he hated Peregrine Gordon — that's the Peregrine the note had mentioned, of course — and how he would ensnare his enemies and exact perfect vengeance upon them."

She sighed. "So then he brought us here, to a time I don't know, a new world I don't understand. He rechristened me as his wife, though as I said before, that's in name only. He says that, ah…" She blushed. "…that marital relations with a human is an act vastly beneath the dignity of a Time Lord."

Lily chuckled. "My Artie would disagree!"

"I noticed," said Amanda, nodding at the baby. "But that's not how Noel thinks and… well, to tell you the truth, for the most part, I'm glad of it." She stared off at nothing for a long moment, then drew a deep breath. "At any rate, he rebuilt Live Oak Manor, saying the very house itself will draw his enemies to him." With great sadness in her eyes, she added, "And then he went to get you. You and the baby. I'm so sorry!"

Lily smiled and shook her head. "It's not your fault."

"Oh no, I know it isn't. But there's nothing I can do. I'd help you if I could. I'd help _myself _if I could! But…" She gestured toward the door. "There's a madman out there with the abilities of a god, and I don't know what to do to get away from him, or stop him, or anything!"

"Neither do I," said Lily, then leaned closer and whispered, "But Artie and Jim will know what to do."


	9. Act Three, Part Two

**Act Three, Part Two**

"I wish I knew what to do, Jim!" Artie muttered with a sigh.

"At least you got Col Richmond to stop breathing down our necks," Jim said as he unlocked the TARDIS door.

They stepped inside. "Well, yeah, he bought that story that we'd gone out for dinner and hadn't heard the telegraph signals! You know, come to think of it, I ought to have Rosalind monitor the telegraph lines and route any incoming messages to the console here. You hear that, Rosalind?"

He tipped up his head to call out that final sentence to the console room in general, and the lights dimmed and brightened in response.

"I take it that's a Yes," Jim quipped. "Now, let's have a look at… Artie, what's that flashing light about?"

"Hmm? Hey!" Artie rushed over to the console, pressed a few buttons, then beamed with delight. "Ha _ha! _Just what we were hoping for! Harlequin's been shopping again. He scooped up one of the items I attached a tracking device to, and he's taken it to, ah…" He checked the readout.

"The year 2013, just outside Vicksburg?"

Artie glanced over at Jim. "In fact, yes! How did you know?"

"That was the article I was about to show you." Jim stepped over to the second monitor and brought up the webpage once more. "There."

Artie leaned in to have a look, perusing the report quickly, occasionally reading isolated phrases aloud. "Live Oak Manor… sesquicentennial of the Battle of Vicksburg… perfect replica… namesake of the late owner!… and his _wife _Amanda?" He glanced at Jim. "That's a pretty big coincidence if his wife has the same name as his niece!" He scrolled further down the page to read more.

And that's when they both saw the picture. Jim gave a low whistle. "I didn't get this far down the page before."

"That's our old friend Vautrain _né _Harlequin, all right," said Artie.

"And the woman on his arm," Jim added. "I'd know her anywhere. That's Amanda."

Artie turned a glance Jim's way. "Then he _did _marry his niece?" He shuddered. "I always knew he was nuts, but… what's up with _that?"_

Jim was already resetting the temporal and spatial controls of the TARDIS. "Let's go find out," he said grimly.

Artie caught his arm. "Without a plan? As soon as Vautrain knows we're there, he'll kill Lily and Peaches!"

"I have a plan," said Jim.

"Oh, good! What is it?"

From his pocket Jim pulled forth the staser.

"Ah," said Artie. "Um… perhaps we need to flesh out the plan just a little more than that, huh, Jim?"

…

Vautrain was standing just outside the door of the bedroom-_cum_-jail cell to which he'd assigned Lily and the baby when Amanda came out. He scowled at her as he locked the door. "Did you have a pleasant chat with our, ah, guests, my dear?" he inquired.

Amanda shrank within herself for a moment, then deliberately threw back her shoulders and stood up straight. "In fact, we did," she replied.

He grasped her upper arm and steered her away. "Do not become attached to them, dear Amanda! You know the fate I have prepared for the lovely Mrs Gordon and child."

"I know you intend to murder them, yes."

He spun her to face him, his eyes blazing. "_It is not murder! _It is _justice_. Yes, and a long-overdue justice for the murder _he _perpetrated against my beloved wife and baby!"

Amanda regarded him speculatively for a long moment, then licked her lips. "You, uh, you have a beloved wife again, Noel," she ventured. She lifted a hesitant hand, then laid it shakily upon his breast. "I've always loved you, you know. We could… we could be happy together, we two. Perhaps even have, um… children. Just like they…" She nodded toward the room in which Lily was nursing her daughter.

Vautrain snatched her hand off his chest and gripped it hard, his face livid. "The fact that Peregrine is pleased to engender _mongrels _does not mean that I wish to do the same! I had _one _beloved wife in my life, and you, my dear, are not she! You, Amanda, are merely a ruse, a stratagem, that and nothing more. Do not presume to speak to me again with your puling words of love and devotion. I know they are lies! I know what you feel towards me: not the passion of a wife, but the fear of a kicked cur. I…" He broke off and stared about them.

"What's that?" Amanda squeaked in panic. She threw her arms around her husband and buried her face in his chest, sheltering against him.

For all around them in all directions, dozens and scores and hundreds of bells and whistles, booms and crashes, had erupted all at once. Vautrain's piercing eyes darted about, analyzing what was happening. "They must have been busy," he declared. "They have landed their TARDIS some fifty or sixty times within the span of a second, dropping off all those noisemakers, intent, no doubt, on so distracting me with the cacophony as to render me incapable of concentration. And you!" He entwined his fingers in Amanda's hair and wrenched her away from him. "_You _were in on their plans. You too were part of the distraction, with your inane prattling about being a loving wife, about desiring offspring with me. _Bah!" _He flung her bodily from him.

"No! _What? _Noel, no! I knew nothing about…! I, I only wanted… Noel, I just want a happy normal life! You speak of me as your wife, and I thought perhaps…"

"Silence!" he thundered, and her mouth slammed shut on the remainder of her words. He glowered down at her. "You," he said coldly, "were never anything more than a means to an end, and now you are no longer even that. And as you have betrayed me…"

Her eyes wide with horror, she shook her head vigorously, her mouth still sealed shut, her hands lifted placatingly, pleadingly.

A small smile touched the corners of his mouth. "My treacherous wife," he purred. "Have done with thee; I banish thee. Be gone!" He bent his mind upon her and gave a wave of his hand. Instantly tendrils of mist sprang up around her, engulfing her.

And when they cleared, Amanda was no longer there. She had disappeared, leaving not a rack behind.

Harlequin passed a hand over his face, his shoulders sagging from his exertion. Catching his breath, he murmured, "Excellent! And now to deal with those intruders." He turned and strode back to the bedroom cell, melting right through the solid door without bothering to stop, unlock, or open it.


	10. Act Three, Part Three

**Act Three, Part Three**

"For once you remembered to leave the emergency brake off," Jim commented.

"Oh, ha ha ha. You always say we need to come in quietly."

"Yes, and _you _always say you like the groaning and wheezing sounds the TARDIS makes."

"True. But not today. No offense, Rosalind." Artie patted the TARDIS' console consolingly.

Without for once its usual loud _vwarping _sound nor its final _SHTUNK_, the time rotor in the central column of the console fell still, and a subtle settling underfoot told them they had landed. Artie pulled the lever that opened the outer doors, and both he and Jim stepped out into a beautifully furnished bedroom. Ah, there she was, perched on the edge of the bed, baby Suzie in her arms.

"Lil!"

"Artemus!" A gamut of emotions flitted over her face, starting with joy and ending with horror. "Artemus, Jim, you've got to get out of here right away! You know what Harlequin will do if he catches you here!"

"It's what he'll do to you and Suzie that we're concerned about," said Jim. In three quick strides he crossed the room to the door and took up a position just to the side of it, the staser in his hand.

"Come on, honey," said Artie. He took the baby from her, cradling his daughter on his arm as he gave Lily his other hand to help her to her feet, then swiftly escorted both to the open doors of the TARDIS; Lily just barely had time to snatch up her knitting bag along the way.

"But what's Jim doing?" she asked, glancing at her husband's best friend. "Why is he over there?"

"Just get in the TARDIS, dear. We'll explain later." He gave Suzie a kiss on the head before passing her back to her mother, then engulfed his wife in a tight embrace. "I love you, Lil," he said at last as he released her, and there was something in the tone of his voice, something in the way his eyes fastened on her, feasting on her, that sent a chill crawling up Lily's spine as fear clutched at her heart.

"What are you doing?" she said. "What do you have planned?"

"To finish this," said Jim.

"Finish…" she echoed.

"I'm sorry, Lily, but there's no time to explain. We need to…" Artie's words were drowned out by a sudden onslaught of sound as dozens and hundreds of noisemakers burst into clamorous life.

"What's that?" cried Lily.

"The alarm clock, so to speak."

"Right," said Jim. "Meaning Harlequin will be here at any moment."

"Meaning also that you mustn't be here when he arrives, Lil!"

"But…!"

"Now, now, just go on inside and wait for us, there's a dear," said Artie. He gave Lily a little shove, gentle but emphatic, then reached in and firmly closed the TARDIS doors with herself and the baby inside, and himself and Jim out in the room. Lily heard the sound of her husband's key in the lock, then his voice calling out, "Rosalind! Emergency Program One, if you will."

Lily stared at the doors in shock for a moment, then began pounding on them. "Artemus!" she cried. "Open these doors! Let me out! Let me… Oh, wait!" Of course, there was the lever on the console she must use to open the doors! She turned then and headed for the console, only to realize that the time rotor, without its usual loud groanings and wheezings, was rising and falling within its tall glass column. A small lurch underfoot confirmed to her that the TARDIS was on the move. "What? Wait! What's going on? Rosalind, what are you doing?" Lily hurried to the chairs that made up the parlor area of the console room, quickly shoved two of the seats together front to front to make a provisional bassinet in which to place Suzie, then rushed to the central console. She rounded it to reach the typewriter and punched at the keys, clattering out, "Rosalind, what is happening?"

On the monitor flashed up the words: "EMERGENCY PROGRAM ONE."

"Yes, I heard Artie say that," Lily said aloud. "But what does it _mean?"_

No answer.

"Oh, don't make this difficult!" she grumbled and typed out her question.

New words appeared on the screen: "EMERGENCY PROGRAM ONE MEANS THAT I AM TO LEAVE AND NOT RETURN."

"What? But, but _Artemus! _He and Jim are there with that, that maniac! We can't just leave them there. We have to go back!" Lily started flipping switches and turning dials, trying to reset the controls to bring about a return to Live Oak Manor. She pulled the lever to engage her new course.

Nothing happened. That is to say, nothing happened the way Lily intended it to. The controls reset themselves of their own accord, and the TARDIS continued on taking her own chosen course, bearing her passengers further and further away from Live Oak.

"No, Rosalind, no! We have to go _back!" _Again Lily tried to adjust the controls, but this time she couldn't get them to budge at all; they stubbornly refused to be reset.

Crying with frustration, Lily beat her fists on the console. "Why won't you listen?" she wailed.

The monitor blanked, then flashed up new words: "EMERGENCY PROGRAM ONE IS INVOKED IN DIRE SITUATIONS WHEN IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT A TT CAPSULE NOT FALL INTO THE HANDS OF AN ENEMY."

"But…" Lily sputtered, thinking quickly, "but in this case the enemy already _has _a TT capsule. We must return!"

"IN THIS CASE, THAT WHICH MUST NOT FALL INTO THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY IS YOURSELF, LILY. YOU AND PEACHES. MY DUTY IS CLEAR."

Peaches, Lily thought, her mind latching on to a point of triviality in the midst of her time of terror. Of all things, Rosalind had adopted Artie's nickname for the baby! "But what are Artie and Jim going to do without a TARDIS?" she demanded of Rosalind. "How are they going to escape?"

No answer.

"Rosalind, how are they going to escape from Harlequin? How will they ever get back?"

Now, haltingly, one word at a time, came up one more message:

"THEY…

"MIGHT…

"NOT."

Lily pressed her hand over her mouth. "No," she whispered. "No! _No!"_

…

"He'll be here any second, Jim. We have to be ready," said Artie. He reached into a pocket and pulled out his sonic screwdriver, dialing up the most irritating setting the device boasted.

"I'm afraid you're wrong about that, my dear Peregrine," said a highly unwelcome voice. "_He _is already here. Captain, do not even think of it!" Harlequin, facing Artie, flung out a hand toward Jim, immobilizing him with the staser half raised, then lifted his other hand toward Artie.

Instantly Artie pressed the button on the sonic, filling the air with a whine so ear-piercing, so pervasive that Harlequin threw his hands over his ears, gnashing his teeth. Jim, released from Harlequin's grip, aimed the staser, his finger beginning to squeeze.

"Wait, Jim!"

Jim started and shot a glance at his partner. "What?"

"Harlequin, one last chance," said Artie, yelling to make himself heard over the sound of the sonic screwdriver. "I never meant you any harm, not to you, not to your family. If you will just promise me that you'll leave us alone, me and my family and friends…" He met Jim's eyes and finished with, "We'll let you go."

"You'll… you'll let me go?" Harlequin gaped at him, then began to laugh. "You'll let me _go? _How magnanimous is the murderer, who offers me release! Me, Harlequin the wronged, Harlequin the bereaved, Harlequin the _lost! _Oh, listen to me, my dear Mr Gordon, and hear me well! I assure you by the fires of Hell and by the every beat of my two hearts, should you let me go, you will spend every single one of the rest of your days looking over your shoulder, waiting, watching to see from which quarter the blow will fall! I will _never _leave you alone! No, not you, nor your family, nor your friends," and his eyes darted toward Jim, "nor your acquaintances, no, nor even your horse and the stray dog you pet in the street! _You _presume to make to _me _an offer of _**clemency?"**_

Artie bowed his head, glanced once at Jim, and gave a nod.

Harlequin turned toward Captain West, and the staser fired.

Yes, fired, a beam of gleaming energy spitting forth from it, striking Harlequin full in the chest, bathing him in brilliant light.

And Harlequin stood and took it. He smiled and laughed and did not fall.

"Ah," said Artie. "That's… that's not supposed to happen."

"Indeed, Mr Gordon?" said Harlequin, still laughing. "And what of this?" Abruptly the sonic screwdriver flipped from Artie's hand and disappeared into thin air, and its sound disappeared with it. "Or this?" the madman added. He fixed his eyes on James West, grinned wolfishly, then made with his hand the same gesture he had made recently towards his wife Amanda. "Be gone!" he cried in triumph.

"Jim!" yelled Artie, as in a swirl of white mist, his partner and best friend vanished.

**End of Act Three**


	11. Act Four, Part One

**Act Four, Part One**

The ground under Jim's feet tilted and tilted again, the swirling mists clouding his vision, disorienting him. He had experienced this before long ago during their first meeting with Vautrain, during the little excursions the crazed colonel had sent him on. He had no idea where he was going; his only thought was how he was to get back. Artie was left now to face the insane god alone, and that was unthinkable!

The swirling white mist gave way to something more substantial flying in the air all around Jim, something small and solid and cold. No, not merely cold — bitterly cold, bitingly cold. Freezingly cold! Already his fingers were becoming numb, and he tucked his hands into his pockets, then up under his arms instead, hunching forward against the blasting wind.

He was caught in a blizzard.

Jim squinted through the eddying flurries. Where was this? For a moment he thought he saw something off to his right and turned in that direction, lifting an arm to shield his face.

Yes, there _was _something over there, some gray form squatting amidst the unrelenting white. He couldn't get a good look at whatever-it-was, not through the raging of the storm, but now he glimpsed something detaching itself from that gray form, something darker, smaller. It moved closer, looming up through the wind-blown white, becoming a familiar shape, a human shape. A man.

A hand caught at Jim's arm and gave a tug, urging him on toward the gray thing from which the man had come. Not having any better choice, Jim allowed himself to be led, wondering where Vautrain had sent him and whether the man he was following would turn out to be friend or foe.

The closer they came to the squat gray thing, the better Jim could make out what it was: a tent. The man lifted a flap and gestured Jim into a small room, then lifted a second flap to escort him into the tent proper, into a large and airy room. Warm as well, for a cheery little fire within some sort of small cylindrical enclosure crackled jauntily in the center of the room. The warmth engulfed Jim in a friendly embrace.

Sitting beyond the fire was a woman in a voluminous dress, a mug of something steaming held between her hands. She glanced up and nearly dropped the mug. "Jim!"

For a moment Jim forgot how cold he'd been as he stared at the woman just beyond the fireplace. The years had not been kind to her, but he knew her at once, recognized her by those wide brown eyes and the worried set of her mouth. "Amanda," he said, "Amanda Vautrain."

"Ah," came a muffled voice from Jim's side. "Good. Then I won't need to make introductions."

Jim glanced at the man who had led him here and frowned. The figure was as yet covered from head to toe — face, hands, and all — by heavy, thick clothing. With alacrity, though, the man was pulling off the protective garments. Gloves first, then the hood of the fur-lined parka, revealing a muffler wrapped around the lower half of his face, a pair of tinted goggles above that, and both surmounted by a snug-fitting knitted cap. This the man yanked off and dropped onto a chair along with the gloves, disclosing now a shock of shaggy white-blond hair. Next came off the goggles, then the muffler.

And now Jim saw that he'd been wrong. This was not a man. A beaming middle-aged woman undid the fastenings of the parka and tossed it aside as well. Her grin was as warm as the air in the tent as she grasped Jim's hand and pulled him in close for a bear hug. "Ha _ha! _I should have known something was up when you swapped the tents on me!" she exclaimed merrily. "But aren't you a sight for sore eyes though! Bet you never expected to run into me halfway up Mt Everest, Jim! Come on over to the fire and get warm."

Jim took a good look at the affable woman tugging him closer to the cylindrical fireplace. She was older than he was, although part of that assessment might be influenced by the whiteness of her hair. She wore not a lick of makeup, and her skin, though deeply lined around her mouth and with a set of crow's-feet that spoke of someone who smiled easily and often, bore a radiant, healthy glow. She was smiling up at him, but now she tipped her head and peered more closely. With an incredulous shake of her head, she said, "You don't recognize me, do you?"

He slipped his arm from her hand. "Should I?"

Her brows knit as she now inspected him minutely, then she gave a low whistle. "Oh, you're _young!" _she said. "As young as I can remember ever seeing you! Could it be that… Jim, I knew at once that we were meeting out of order, but… is it _that _much out of order?"

His own brows arched. "Out of order?" he echoed. "Then you must be someone from my future."

She grinned at him. "Oh, you wouldn't be James West if you weren't quick on the draw! Yes, that's exactly what I mean. You're younger than I remember, and as for me, well…" She inclined her head and spread out her hands. "As you can see. Come to think of it though," she added, tapping a finger against her nose, "I suppose it's entirely possible that I've regenerated since you last saw me."

"Regen…!" That came from Amanda. She shrank back from the white-haired woman. "Don't tell me you're one of them, too!"

"One of _them? _If you mean a Time Lord, then yes, I am. Well," she added with a self-deprecating shrug, "Time _Lady_, if you want to be pedantic about it. But you needn't worry, Amanda. I'm nothing like Harlequin."

"You know him, though," said Jim.

She turned back to him. "Indeed I do, more's the pity. And there's a durn sight of people, I'd hazard to say, who would be perfectly happy to have never heard of Prof Harlequin!"

Jim scrutinized her carefully. "How can a Time Lady be here? The Doctor told us there were no more Time Lords."

"And yet the Doctor never recognized that your own partner was among our number, small as it is." She waved a hand. "But never mind all that. I assume Harlequin banished you the same as he did Amanda here?"

Jim's eyes shifted to the woman huddled miserably by the fire. "He did that to you as well?"

Mutely she nodded.

"She made him angry," explained the Time Lady. "Occupational hazard of close proximity to Harlequin, right? What'd _you _do to tick him off? Besides exist, I mean."

Jim pulled something out of his pocket. "I shot him with this."

The Time Lady gaped at him, then let loose another low whistle. "Oh, by the ten little perfectly pedicured toenails of Rassilon, you've got a staser!" She stepped closer and peered at it, careful not to touch it. "Where'd you get that thing?"

"As it happens," said Jim bitterly, "from Harlequin himself."

She shot him a sharp look. "That's _his _staser? And it obviously didn't work…"

Jim could all but see the gears meshing away inside her head. "Right," he answered. "He made sure we had a broken staser. Which was just the sort of thing I ought to have expected from him," he added, angry with himself.

"Broken." From one of her own pockets the Time Lady produced a sonic screwdriver. "Do you mind if I, uh… Oh no, I don't want to hold the thing!" she added as Jim automatically drew it back from her. "No, I understand. You have no idea who I am nor any reason to trust me. But I don't need to hold the staser. Just let me…" She flicked on the sonic, filling the tent with its electronic whine for a few seconds. "There." She looked at the readout, then turned it to let Jim see as well. "And how 'bout that! It ain't broken after all!"

Jim glanced at the information on the sonic and shook his head. "What are you showing me?"

"This." She tapped a certain spot on the readout. "That little blip there. It says that Harlequin went and put a genetic block on this staser."

"And a genetic block is?"

"Oh, that's simple. It means you can aim this particular staser at anything you want to and activate it, and it'll blast whatever you're pointing at — unless you point it at Harlequin. It reads his genetic makeup and won't harm him."

Jim snorted. "Hmm. Just makes a pretty light show instead."

"Oh, really?" She recalibrated her sonic and activated it again, aiming at the staser. Once more the room was filled briefly with an electronic whine. She shut the sonic off, gave it a little toss in the air, caught it, and stowed it back where it had come from. "Ok, there you go, Jim. It'll work now. It'll work on _everyone_."

Their eyes met, and Jim saw that, curiously, in the woman's face was a determination that was nearly as staunch as his own. "Thank you," he said. "Not that it'll do me much good _here_. I need to get back to Artie." He glanced around the room. "I don't suppose you have your TARDIS with you?" he added.

She laughed and glanced at her wrist at what looked like a large and incredibly complex watch there, cinched around her arm by a thick leather strap. She unbuckled the strap, folded up the contraption, and tucked it into a pocket. "Sorry, Jim," she said airily, "but I left my TARDIS in my other clothes. But don't worry. You'll see Harlequin soon enough."

He frowned, suddenly unsure just which side this Time Lady was on. "What do you mean?" he asked sharply, and now he aimed the staser in his hand at her.

She smiled at him. "No, no! I'm not turning you over to him! Why would I do that? No, I mean that, the more I talk to you, the more I recognize what's going on right now. This is, for me at least, an old story, one that you and, uh, and Artie told me long, long ago. And if I'm right about this story, then any second now Harlequin is going to summon Lily and the baby back before him. And when he does that, boy is he gonna get the surprise of his life!"

"And what is that?" asked Jim.

She beamed up at him, took hold of his hand that wasn't holding the staser, then touched the right side of her chest just under her collar bone. And to Jim's shock — Amanda's as well — the Time Lady vanished.

Yet Jim could still feel her hand holding fast to his own. She squeezed it gently. "What surprise could that be, you wonder?" she said and began to chuckle like a mad thing. "Why, _me!"_


	12. Act Four, Part Two

**Act Four, Part Two**

"What have you done with Jim?" Artie demanded. He took a step forward, only to find himself abruptly immobilized.

Harlequin, standing proud before him and all but smirking, broke out into a merry chuckle. "Why, my dear Peregrine, where do you suppose I would have sent him but far, far from here? Into Limbo perhaps, to languish in unending agony. Or to the dark side of the moon, there to perish slowly, deprived of air, deprived of heat, deprived of…"

"Of your endless mouth to bore him to death?" Artie fired at him.

Again Harlequin chuckled. "Ah, the bravado of the condemned man! For that _is _what you are, as well you must know. You are alone now, and in my hands. There is none left to deliver you. Your partner Captain West? Gone, vanished, dispersed perhaps to the four winds! Your father?" Harlequin snorted. "Gone as well! But it has been long years since _he _left you to your fate, forsaking you here upon this Earth while he spirited your mother away, abandoning you, his only son, in a cowardly bid to keep his wife alive. But that was only fitting! It was meet that they should shun you so, cutting you off for your crime, your murder, your…"

"My father," Artie retorted heatedly, "realized that you would never rest until you killed my mother in front of me, Harlequin! He separated the two of us to thwart _your _plans for murder. I saw his face when he put me into the Chameleon Arch to transform me into a human. I saw his hearts breaking as he prepared to hide me here on Earth, hiding me like a needle buried in a haystack, hiding me from _you_. It was all you, Harlequin! You stole from me my home, my childhood, my education, my parents, but you will _not _steal from me my memories, nor will you twist my father's love for me into something resembling your own convoluted misconception of familial love." Artie glared at his captor and snorted. "Why, you wouldn't know love if it bit you on the ankle!"

Fury blazed across Harlequin's face. "You despicable base-born craven! You will not speak to me in that manner! How dare you essay to lay all blame for _your _crimes at _my _feet, you worm, you…!" A glimmer now of delight sparked up in Harlequin's deep dark eyes. "Worm — Yes! Indeed, that describes you perfectly! Down, sir, down upon your belly, to grovel before me!"

Artie's legs crumpled from under him as if made of rubber. He fought desperately to stay upright, but at best he could only postpone the inevitable. Down he fell, down upon his face. He tried to catch himself, his arms flailing in front of him, but they might as well have been rubber as well. He wallowed helplessly, managing only to roll over onto his side. From that lowly position Artie looked up at the triumphant face of the man who hated him.

"Yes, _yes!" _crowed Harlequin. "For the loss of my wife, for the loss of my child, for the loss even of my legs — though that fault properly lays at the feet of your departed partner — for every privation I have suffered because you _live_…" He laughed, eyes gleaming, seeming to grow taller and yet taller again, looming over Artie. "Ah, you shall suffer even as I have suffered, stripe for stripe and blow for blow. _You _shall know every loss I have ever known. Already I have removed from you that other half of yourself, your great good friend Captain West. Already I have reduced you to your current condition, the estate of a man who is only half a man. And now…" He lifted his eyes, and how they darted about, searching, seeking! "Now. _Now_, Peregrine, wherever you have sent your wife and child away, they are not far enough away to elude my notice nor my grasp. Momentarily were they in my hands; momentarily have they escaped; momentarily shall they return to me. Yes, even now! I have merely to…" He tipped his head and concentrated, eyes closing, breath quickening. "To me," he crooned. "To me! To me, Lily Gordon, Suzanne Gordon, will you come! You have no choice, no will in this matter. You. Will. _Come!"_

…

Lily gasped as the TARDIS gave a lurch. The room shuddered, all the lights dimming alarmingly. "What… what is that? What's happening?"

All around her Rosalind quivered and groaned. The floor tilted underfoot. The time rotor in its glass column jittered, slowed, seemingly fighting for every inch as it rose up to its height, then reversed again.

"Rosalind! What's wrong?" Lily tried to get her fingers on the keys of the typewriter, but the console was shaking too badly.

On the monitor these words appeared: "IT IS HARLEQUIN. HE IS TRYING TO SUMMON YOU AND PEACHES, TO WREST YOU FROM WITHIN ME, FROM WITHIN THE SANCTUARY OF MY PROTECTION."

The entire TARDIS pitched, careening, reeling like a drunkard. The chairs of the parlor area slid out of their places, and a couple of them fell over entirely. With a gasp of horror Lily sprang from her seat at the console and dashed for the disjointing parlor where she'd left the baby. A split second before Lily reached the chairs, the pair upon which the infant had been lying tipped over, one this way, one that, spilling out the baby. Lily made a leap and grabbed little Suzie right out of the air, then landed hard, rolling onto her back, clutching her little one to her breast, shaking from the close call.

The baby began to cry. Lily sat up, cuddling the child, shushing her gently. Slowly she got to her feet and battled her way back over to perch before the console. "Rosalind?" she whispered. " 'Wrest us from within you'? Can he do that? Can he pluck us right from inside a TARDIS?"

Again the TARDIS whirled, the time rotor all but screaming in its effort to continue its normal rise and fall. And the new words upon the monitor read: "NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT!"

…

Harlequin stood yet taller, head held high, arms outreaching, filling all the room, all the world. "Come!" he cried. "Come! I command it!"

To Artie's horror, there in the corner of the room he saw a flicker as something began to appear, blocking the view of the wall beyond.

…

Shaking, shaking, all the world was shaking! The time rotor juddered, stopping, starting again. The doors of the storage cabinets lining one wall of the console room rattled, some of them springing open, spilling forth their contents: odds and ends, hats and cloaks, gas masks and blankets, a sword cane and a pair of anti-grav lifters. Lily fell off her chair and huddled under the edge of the console, Suzie wrapped up in her arms.

From somewhere deep within the TARDIS came the slow, ominous tolling of a great bell.


	13. Act Four, Part Three

**Act Four, Part Three**

Harlequin smiled in triumph as the walls of the TARDIS faded into view. "Ah!" he said gloatingly. "And here are the dear ladies now!"

The TARDIS faded in, and faded out again. The walls of the corner behind it came into plain sight once more.

"No!" cried Harlequin.

"Yes," breathed Artie.

His captor rounded on him. "How are you doing that?" he snarled.

"Me?" said Artie. "You think _I'm _doing anything? My TARDIS knows what you're up to. She knows if you win, an innocent woman and child, both of whom she's particularly fond of, will die. She'll fight you to the last ounce of her strength to keep Lily and Peaches out of your hands — and more power to her!"

Harlequin glared down at him, his fingers clutching at the air. "What an enemy of truth and justice you are, that you have perverted even the TT capsule you use to serve your will! Well, nothing defeats Prof Harlequin!" He shrank in on himself for an eternal moment, then threw back his head and cried out in a voice like the endless vastness of space and time itself.

"Peregrine's daughter! _COME!"_

…

That unseen hand gripped Jim's firmly as the cozy tent disappeared. Again Jim was engulfed in the swirling white mist; again he found himself in that place that was no place, his vision swimming as the ache of silence echoed in his ears.

And then he was through. The mist dissipated, revealing anew the room from which he'd been banished. There was Harlequin, stretched up on his toes, nearly floating in the air. On the floor across the room, immobile and utterly helpless, there lay Artie.

And between them in the air was the shimmering substance of a TARDIS about to land.

"Harlequin!" Jim cried. The Time Lady had said Harlequin would be summoning Lily and the baby. But if Jim could break the madman's concentration… He lifted the staser, ready to fire.

Harlequin whirled to stare in astonishment. "_You! _How is it you are here?"

And in that instant, the TARDIS disappeared. In that instant also, the iron grip of the mad Time Lord's mind clamped down on Jim's body. Furious, Harlequin snarled, "If you have cost me my prize, Captain West, I swear to you, I will…!"

"Oh, you'll _what_, Turnip Head?"

Harlequin broke off to stare about himself in consternation. "What… Who said that?"

Artie, still on the floor unable to move, was also looking around. He met Jim's eye, silently inquiring of him what was going on.

The disembodied voice continued. "That's right, Harlequin," said an unseen woman, "I'm talking to _you_. Up to your usual fun and games, are you? What is it this time: killing Jim? Killing Artie? Killing them both? Oh, you're little Johnny-One-Note, you are. Kill, kill, kill!"

They could all hear the voice clearly; it seemed to come from everywhere at once. Harlequin turned his head this way and that, trying to get a lock on the woman's location. If he could only find her, he would certainly capture her. "Who are you?" he asked again, intent on keeping her talking.

"Someone you know — or maybe you don't! Someone tired of your endless quest for revenge. Someone…" she added with a chuckle, "…who would really rather you didn't know her name!"

Harlequin was still turning his head, glancing here and there. "You know me?" he inquired.

"Oh, your reputation precedes you, Professor, believe you me! And I have no doubt you hope that by keeping me talking, you'll be able to pinpoint where I am. That's a good idea… except for one thing."

"And that is?"

Again she laughed. "Ever heard of ventriloquism?"

Harlequin's concentration was being divided; Artie could tell. His body wasn't being held as completely motionless as before, and he took advantage of it, quietly slipping his fingers into the closest pocket he could reach without making too obvious a movement. He had a little ball of something interesting there, if he could just ease it out…

"Hey, Monkey-Brains!" the woman called again. "Did I ever tell you you're _tops _with me?" Something hurtled out of thin air and hit Harlequin in the shins. It bounced off and went whirling around the floor for a bit before swiftly losing momentum and spinning out onto its side.

It was a top. An ordinary child's top.

Harlequin's eyes flashed. By throwing something at him, she had given her location away! He bent all his mind upon her, catching at her, grasping at her, his mind seeking, searching…

"Perception filter!" he cried in triumph and ripped the device from her shoulder.

"Ow!" she yelped as suddenly there she was, a middle-aged woman with a mop of shaggy white hair. "Careful, you pervert! You nearly tore my shirt right off!"

"You," said Harlequin, seizing her without hands and lifting her into the air, "whoever you are, shall die now. For your insolence, your insults, your interference, I shall now visit upon you the same fate I have imagined all these years to inflict upon the loved ones of Artemus Gordon. _Your _death, you nameless interloper, shall be the appetizer before the banquet!" He lifted her still higher.

She laughed and spat at him.

Rage consumed him. "That was your final insult of all!" he fumed, bringing every resource of his prodigious mind to bear upon that provoking woman. And as he focused himself upon her, he quite forgot his other two captives.

Artie on the floor plucked that ball from his pocket and flung it with all his might. Harlequin saw it out of the corner of his eye and divided his attention once again to seize the ball with his mind and send it hurtled back the way it had come. The ball hit the floor by Artie's feet — and bounced harmlessly away.

"Harlequin!"

And now Jim, his limbs his own again, aimed the staser and fired it even as the Time Lord turned toward him. Harlequin saw the incoming blast and laughed merrily that Captain West should fire the same staser at him a second time. He stood strong and tall as the beam of gleaming energy struck him full in the chest, bathing him in brilliant light. He smiled and laughed.

And froze, the laughter still on his lips.

And fell. And great was the fall of Harlequin. He fell and did not rise.

**END OF ACT FOUR**


	14. Tag, Part One

**Tag, Part One**

Something else fell.

"Ow…" muttered the white-haired woman. Jim was just pulling Artie to his feet, and now both hurried to her side to check on her.

"Are you all right?" asked Jim.

"I think so," she allowed, gingerly testing her arms and legs. "Well, as long as I don't start leaking out clouds of shiny golden glow-dust, I suppose we can call this a success, right?" she quipped.

"Then you're a Time Lady," Artie stated.

She grinned at him. "No, really?"

"You recognize her, Artie?"

He shook his head. "Should I?"

"She knows us," said Jim. "She's apparently from our future."

"Ah." Artie looked her over again. "So what's your name, then, hmm? Deus ex Machina?"

Her face split into a brilliant smile. "Oh, I _like _that! I've gone by quite a number of names in my years, and I never did exactly pick a proper Time-Lord one yet, but believe me, _that _is one I'll be giving heavy consideration to!"

Artie tipped an eyebrow at her even as Jim helped the woman to her feet. "That's not exactly an answer, and you know it!" Artie scolded.

She shrugged. "True. Tell you what, though, after what just happened, how 'bout you just call me the Gadfly?"

Artie gave a snort and rolled his eyes. He then crossed to the place where Harlequin lay stretched out on the floor, their enemy's handsome face frozen into a mask of stunned surprise. Artie checked the man swiftly, then nodded to Jim. "He's dead, all right."

"Want to find another star to toss his body into?" said Jim.

"Yeah, like it helped the last time!" Artie grumbled back. "Of course, first we have to… Ah… What are you doing?"

Both men looked at the Gadfly, who was stalking about the room, peering into every nook and cranny. "He threw it somewhere," she complained, "and I'd really like to… Oh, crumbs, it's just going to be quicker to do it this way." She pulled her sonic screwdriver from a pocket, selected a setting, and switched it on.

"Aha!" She flung herself onto her belly and crawled halfway under the bed, then emerged again waving something in the air. "My perception filter!" she hollered over the sound of the sonic. She switched it off, frowned, then switched it on again.

"Now what!" called Artie.

"Just checking for any other stray Gallifreyan technology floating around!" she yelled back. A second later the ear-splitting sound of the sonic disappeared again and she tucked the device into her pocket. "Nope, didn't find anything else. We're good."

Jim cocked an eyebrow at her. "Good?"

"Well, you know the old saying about not wanting certain items to fall into the wrong hands. No telling what Harlequin might have incorporated into his house. And I still haven't figured out how he transfers the memories."

Jim and Artie exchanged a glance. "Excuse me?" said Artie. "Transfers memories?"

She looked up from examining her perception filter. "Oh yeah! Well, he's got to be doing _something_. I've personally seen him die, oh, at least half a dozen times, yet every time he shows up again, the new version remembers what the previous one did. I mean, for all I know he's got some sort of souped-up thumb drive deal going, or a cloud connection like you wouldn't believe, but he's _got _to be uploading the memories from one model to the next _some _way!"

Again the agents exchanged glances. "You care to explain all that?" said Jim.

She gave a small laugh. "Well, _you _know! You're the ones who pointed it out to me all that time ago. You said that he…" She stopped short. "Oops. It was future you who told past me, and if current me tells current you, where does the knowledge originate? No, that's circular. I'm not starting any paradoxes!" She glanced around. "And anyway, we should get out of here. Who knows how soon the next version of Harlequin will show up?"

"Next version…" said Artie. He gave his nose a thump with a finger as he too glanced around. "She's right, Jim. We should get out of here." He clapped his buddy on the shoulder and headed for the door, only to find it was, "Hmph. Locked."

Jim took his lockpick out from under his lapel and set to work. Behind him, the Gadfly pulled the wrist-strap gadget out of her pocket and buckled it back on. "What are you two planning to do?" she asked.

"I had to invoke Emergency Program One to get Lily and Peaches out of here, which means of course that my TARDIS…"

"…can't come back. Right. But why do you need to unlock the door?"

Jim finished and put his lockpick away again. "Because somewhere in this house there has to be another TARDIS."

"Yeah, Harlequin's," added Artie.

The Gadfly wrinkled her nose. "Ew, and you plan to use _that _one?" She snorted. "Shiny silver dandruff flakes of Rassilon, but I'd never set _foot _inside Harlequin's TARDIS — not willingly, at least! That thing's been with him all this time, taking him wherever he wants to go, playing a part in his vengeance? Oh no, I wouldn't trust that TARDIS any further than I could throw her!"

The agents again shared a glance. "She's got a good point there, Jim," said Artie.

"But we've got to get home somehow, Artie," Jim returned. "And like you said, Rosalind's orders are to stay away from here completely."

"Mm, that's ok. I can drop you two off."

Jim and Artie looked at her. She was hunched over the gadget on her wrist, her fingers flying as she keyed in data. "And… there!" She smiled up at them. "Ready to go?"

"Go where?" said Jim. "I thought you said you didn't have your TARDIS with you."

She grinned. "Yeah, well." She patted the thing on her wrist. "This isn't exactly a TARDIS."

"What is it then?" said Artie.

She lifted her eyebrows at him. "Oh… Just a piece of Gallifreyan tech I didn't want Harlequin to realize I have. Now, gentlemen, if we could all join hands?" She held out one hand to Jim, the other to Artie. And once she had firm hold of both men's hands, she turned to Artie and said, "If you'd press the red button for me, please."

He did.

They vanished.

…

In Artie's TARDIS, silence reigned. No more lurching of the floor, nor screeching of the time rotor, nor tolling of the Cloister Bell. Even baby Suzie had fallen relatively quiet.

Lily peeked out from under the edge of the console, then shakily got to her feet. "Rosalind?"

A message flashed up on the monitor. "THE SUMMONS HAS ENDED. HARLEQUIN'S PRESENCE IS NO LONGER DETECTED."

"The threat has passed?"

"PRESUMABLY. PRUDENCE DICTATES CONTINUED VIGILANCE."

"And what about Jim and Artemus? We can go back for them now, right?"

The prior message blanked out, and no new words took its place.

"Rosalind, we're going back for them now. Right?" An edge of steel was creeping into Lily's voice.

Again the screen remained empty.

With a frown Lily crossed to the chairs, righted a couple, laid Suzie down in them again, then set the rest up in their proper places as well. She then looked around at the mess of the console room. "What a wreck!" she declared. She moved now to the storage cabinets and began scooping the fallen contents back onto the shelves.

She would keep busy, Lily thought, and give Rosalind time to turn her mind to other matters. Then, when the TARDIS wasn't paying attention, Lily would reset the controls and go find her husband. Surely Rosalind couldn't stay away from that particular time and place forever!

A chime sounded on the console. Lily brushed off her hands and went to see what Rosalind was signaling about.

On the screen was blinking the following message: "YOU DO NOT FULLY UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF EMERGENCY PROGRAM ONE. I AM NOT TO RETURN.

"EVER.

"EVEN IF I WANT TO RETURN, I CANNOT."

Lily slammed her hand down onto the console, tears slipping down her cheeks. "Are you telling me that I've lost him forever? That you can't take me back to my husband, to the father of my child? That Suzie must grow up without her father's love, and that I must live as a widow, when we don't know — we don't _know! _— that it's unsafe to go back for them?"

"WE DO NOT KNOW THAT IT IS UNSAFE, NOR THAT IT IS SAFE. WE KNOW ONLY THAT HARLEQUIN'S ATTACK HAS CEASED. WE DO NOT KNOW WHY IT HAS CEASED. THEREFORE…"

A sound drew Lily's attention and she looked away from the monitor. Over there in front of the doors the air shimmered suddenly, then twisted, warping, shifting. Bright colors appeared, then twisted the opposite way, resolving into three figures.

Lily froze for a heart-stopping second, her hand thrown over her mouth. The next second she was rushing across the console room. "Artemus!"

"Lil!" He caught her and hugged her as if he planned to never let her go again.

Behind them, the Gadfly gave an exaggerated sigh and poked Jim in the ribs with an elbow. "Ah! Young love!" she said with a wink, then lifted her voice and called out, "Hello, Rosalind!"

…

"I still don't understand," said Lily. They were all seated in the parlor chairs now, the baby on her lap, the Gadfly perched on the back of one of the chairs with her feet up on the cushion.

"You don't understand what?" she asked Lily companionably.

"Well, you say Harlequin is dead, but he'll be back again? And you used that thing…" Lily nodded at the gadget on the other woman's wrist. "…to somehow get here without using a TARDIS?"

"And quite a disorienting mode of travel it was!" said Artie. "Seeing the Time Vortex flashing by all around you, with no TARDIS walls to protect you." He gave a shudder.

"But you won't explain how you know Harlequin will be back," Jim said to the Gadfly.

"I _can't _explain," she replied. "To do so would be to initiate a time paradox, since I originally learned how he comes back again and again from the two of you." She gave an apologetic shrug. "I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be difficult. And I have every confidence you _will _figure it out, since otherwise I wouldn't know how he does it." She looked around at them all. "But there is something I do want to say, and it's about Suzie."

Lily's arms drew the baby closer. "What?" she said, a tinge of alarm in her voice.

Suddenly the Gadfly dropped off her chair and knelt before Lily. "Just this: I've known Suzie for a very long time now. I've known all of you for a very long time. And… I know you're worried about her. Harlequin stole her once, and here I am saying he'll be back again and again, so of course you're going to worry and… Well…" She paused. "I know what's coming, so I have to choose my words carefully." She paused again and looked around at them all. "All right. Suzie lives. He's not going to come back and kill her. The last I checked, she's had a good long life — and I do mean good! Regenerated at least once, and…"

"Why?"

The Gadfly turned toward Lily. "Excuse me?"

"Why? Why did she regenerate? Time Lords do that because their bodies are about to die, don't they? So why did… does… will! Why will Suzie need to regenerate?" Lily looked the Gadfly dead in the eyes. "Will it be because of Harlequin?"

"Ah…"

Lily drew a long breath. "If the answer were No, you would have simply said No. Therefore we know that one of these days, Harlequin will so harass our daughter as to bring about her death. It's only the fact that she can regenerate that saves her!"

The Gadfly rubbed at the back of her neck and grimaced. "Look, I was trying to give you comfort and hope! I want to _allay _your worries, not increase them! All right, let me put this another way: Suzie in the future, the Suzie I know, loves her life, loves all of you, and sometimes even loves confronting ol' Harlequin. I just want you to not worry about her. Don't…" Again she paused, then said slowly, "You don't have to let Harlequin influence your decisions. Yes, he's a major pain in the magoombus, but there are whole stretches of your lives that will be Harlequin-free."

She looked down at the baby now sleeping in Lily's arms and gave a crooked smile. "She's quite a little darling, ain't she?"

Lily shifted. "Would you like to hold her?"

"Hold?" A strange look, almost one of horror, passed over the Gadfly's face. "I, um, I… No, I probably shouldn't… That is, I, uh, I… I… Ay-yi-yi! Rocket-powered rubber ducks of Rassilon, I forgot about Amanda!" She sprang away to the spot in front of the doors where they had arrived and began poking at the device on her wrist. "I need to go see about her. Poor kid, stuck halfway up the side of Mt Everest. Hope she's got enough sense to stay inside the tent… There!"

"You're leaving then?"

"Yeah, Jim. I'll go take her, oh, wherever she'd like to go."

"Somewhere Harlequin won't find her, I trust!"

"Me too, Lily, me too."

Artie came forward and took her hand. "Goodbye then, Gadfly." Now that he had her hand, he leaned closer and murmured, "You, ah, wouldn't care to tell us your real name, would you?"

"Real name?" She chuckled. "All my names are real, at least until I'm done being that person. Look." And now she took advantage of holding his hand to pull him still closer. "Just now, what I said to Lily, you know, I, um... I was trying to comfort her — and you saw how that backfired! — because I don't want her to worry. But very soon now, life will take a turn and… Well, look. Don't _worry_. Go with the flow, follow the inspiration you get, and always remember the _end! _Suzie is going to have a great life, and she loves you, all of you, with all her heart." Her eyes twinkled. "Make that _hearts_. So whatever choices you have to make, you and Lily, no matter how it looks, believe me, you don't have to worry that you'll be choosing wrong."

Suddenly she laughed and gave him a crooked smile. "Well… You _will _worry! I know you will. So just…" She threw her arms around Artie and hugged him tightly, then stretched up and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Consider that to be what grown-up Suzie would do if she was here, ok?"

She turned and gave Jim a hug and kiss as well, then circled behind Lily's chair, wrapped her arms around the young mother's shoulders, and dropped a kiss onto her hair. "Bye, everyone," she said. She waved at the baby and added, "Bye, Peaches!" Next she hopped over to the console and gave it a pat. "Bye, Rosalind. Always good to see you, you know."

The lights flickered merrily.

Again the Gadfly went to stand before the doors, looked around one last time, smiled brightly, and pressed the button.

Her figure twisted oddly along with a spangle of colors, and she was gone.


	15. Tag, Part Two (plus Bonus Scene)

**Tag, Part Two**

"Well!" said Artie. "Time to go home?"

Lily nodded. "Please!"

"All right. Your wish is my command, my lady." He started resetting the controls, then paused. "Ah… anyone care to go retrieve Suzie's bassinet and other accoutrements from Live Oak?" he asked innocently.

Suzie gave a howl.

Lily shot her husband a frosty glance. "I believe we can get along quite well without them, Artemus Gordon!" She stood to her feet and began the baby dance, trying to soothe her suddenly annoyed child. "Well, if you gentlemen will excuse us, I'll go see if Suzie would like a nap." She passed through the interior doors and set out to find the latest location of the nursery.

Jim took a seat in the parlor. "It's not a nap that is Suzie's immediate concern, you know."

"Yup," said Artie. "And the sad part is that Harlequin stole all the diapering equipment we had. Poor Suzie!"

"All that we had on the train, that is."

"True, true!" Brightening up, Artie called toward the ceiling, "Rosalind, could you make sure the nursery is well stocked with diapers, please?"

Again the lights flickered in apparent assent.

Artie finished fine-tuning the settings and pulled the lever. As the time rotor began its usual rise and fall to the accompaniment of the comforting sounds of whooshing and groaning, Artie crossed to the parlor and dropped into a seat near Jim's. "Well," he said. "Gadfly certainly gave us a lot to think about." Swiftly he filled Jim in with all that the woman had told him privately.

Jim reciprocated with the things she had told him back in the tent.

"Hmm. But I wonder what she wasn't telling us."

"The things she said would be circular?"

"Yeah, Jim, the things she said she couldn't tell us because she'd originally learned them from us. Things such as…"

"…how Harlequin keeps coming back."

"That's about the most important of them, yes."

"There's also that odd business about transferring memories. What do you suppose that was about, Artie?"

"Well…" He frowned, considering. "She called him different versions. It's as if she thinks that, once he dies, a new him is going to turn up."

"Not a regeneration."

"No. When a Time Lord regenerates, he keeps his memories. Well, usually," he added. "If I remember right, they can sometimes get a little scrambled, or in a particularly rough regeneration, he might suffer a bout of amnesia for a while."

"But that doesn't fit what Gadfly was saying. She specifically thought the new Harlequin _shouldn't _remember what the old version had experienced."

"But why?" said Artie. "What could she have been talking about that's like regeneration, but isn't… Wait!"

Jim glanced at him sharply. "Artie, there's that Mona Lisa smile on your face! What have you thought of?"

Indeed, Artie's face was wreathed in an enigmatic smile. "It just occurred to me, Jim! My father worked for Prof Harlequin back on Gallifrey. Remember?"

Jim nodded. "Yes, he was a bio… What was it?"

"Biomechanic. They were doing basic research on — get this! — on _higher level cloning!" _

"As opposed to lower level cloning?" Jim deadpanned.

Artie shot him a vexed look. "In fact, yes! It's fairly easy to clone simple creatures. Some of them, as you may have learned, clone themselves naturally as a method of reproduction. Amoebae and so forth."

"Single-celled creatures."

"Yes, and some plants as well. But try to do that with vastly more complex living things, and it's not so easy." He thumped his nose again and sighed. "But here's the thing, Jim. What if Harlequin managed to devise a method of cloning not just higher level beings, but the highest level of all?"

"He's cloned Dr Loveless?"

Artie covered his face with his palm. "Jim…"

"Well, that's what Dr Loveless would think, that he is the epitome of mankind."

"But he's already been cloned. No, I'm talking about something even beyond the cloning of a human, and that is…" He leaned forward, his eyes intense. "…the cloning of a _Time Lord!"_

Jim frowned. "And that's what you think Gadfly was getting at."

"Or trying not to get at, yes." Artie sighed. "But what a dreadful thought! Multiple copies of Prof Harlequin!"

"How many might he have made?"

"Considering what a tower of hubris he is? Dozens!"

Jim sat back, thinking. "But so far he's only sent out one of himself at a time…"

"And thank goodness for _that!" _Suddenly Artie laughed, and Jim glanced at him. "Oh, a thought just hit me, Jim. Maybe he never makes more than one clone at a time; maybe he can only tolerate having one extra version of himself around at any given time."

Jim grinned. "Yeah, maybe he's afraid that two or more clones might work together to direct their mind powers against him in concert so as to usurp his throne."

Artie smirked as well. "Imagine them all ganging up on the original, mopping up the floor with him, then turning on each other until there is only one!" He held up a finger dramatically.

"Well, if we ever run into two or more Harlequins at once, we should definitely give Divide-and-Conquer a try."

"I'll keep that in mind, Jim."

The note of the TARDIS changed; they were coming in for a landing. Artie went over to the console and checked the monitor. "All's quiet outside in the baggage car," he reported.

"Good," said Jim, rising to his feet.

"Rosalind," said Artie, "would you inform Lily that we're… Oh."

"What is it?"

Artie smiled and waved at the monitor. "She gave me a view of the nursery. Both of my ladies are sound asleep."

Jim joined him at the console. "What about Orrin?"

"Oh, you're right! We ought to look in on hi… Ah, thank you, Rosalind." For the new scene on the monitor showed the engineer peacefully sleeping under his isolation tent in the sick bay, a readout of the man's vital signs scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

"Well, good!" proclaimed Artie. "That's got everything wrapped up for tonight, doesn't it, Jim? And tomorrow we can…"

"Not quite everything, Artie."

"No?"

"No, I wanted to ask you something. When Harlequin had the Gadfly suspended in midair and was starting to lose his grip on us, you threw something at him."

"Right, a rubber ball."

"_Just _a rubber ball? No bomb, no gas of any kind? Just a bouncing ball?"

"Well sure, Jim! I mean, you know what happened the last time I tried to use a knock-out bomb around Harlequin: he used his magnificent brainpower to gather up the gas and knock _me _out with it!" He shuddered at the memory. "I wasn't about to give him any ammunition to use against me."

"Ah. So that's why it didn't explode. It was simply a distraction."

"Exactly. Something to — I hoped — draw his attention away from you." With a twinkle in his eye, he added, "And it worked, didn't it?"

Jim fixed his partner with a look. "So you threw a rubber ball at Harlequin, and Gadfly threw a child's top at him. You think alike, the two of you. Have you realized that?"

Artie shrugged. "Well, we're both Time Lords."

"No, I think there's more to it than that, Artie. I think… I think there's a reason she wouldn't give us her right name. I think there's a reason she threw herself right into a fight that apparently had nothing to do with her. And I also think that she's the reason I got back to Live Oak."

"Well, of course she was the reason! She used that gizmo she had hidden in her pocket to take you both to Live Oak."

"No. No, she didn't. When she brought us to your TARDIS, we passed through the Time Vortex; you said so yourself. But when she and I traveled together to Live Oak, we didn't go through the Time Vortex. We went through the mist."

Artie's head came up. "Mist?"

Jim nodded. "The same mist, Artie, that sprang up around us every time Vautrain sent us anywhere. And what was Harlequin doing just before she and I arrived?"

"He… he was trying to summon Lily and Peaches. In… in fact, he had just…" Artie's voice trailed off as an amazing thought dawned upon him. "He had just called out with all his might for Peregrine's daughter to come…" He stared at Jim.

Jim met his eyes steadily. "Harlequin called for your daughter, and he got the Gadfly."

"She… _she's _Suzie?" Artie covered his mouth with his hand for a moment. "Our… Jim, that was our _Suzie! _All grown up, and… and brave… and funny… and smart…" His eyes were misting over.

"Bit of a smart aleck too," said Jim. "In other words, a real chip off the old block."

"Yeah, she sure is!" said Artie proudly, then blinked. "Wait, what? _Smart aleck! _Hey!"

Jim grinned and gave Artie a thump on the shoulder. "She's your daughter, Artie."

"She sure is. Isn't that something though?" He grinned. "I can hardly wait to meet her again!"

"Then go ahead," said Jim.

"Um… excuse me?"

Jim waved a hand at the interior door of the TARDIS. "Go see your daughter, buddy. And give her a kiss from me."

Artie did a double-take at the interior door, then chuckled. "Why, I believe I'll do just that, Jim!" And he headed through the door to locate the nursery and his two favorite ladies within it.

**FIN**

**Bonus Scene, a few years down the road**

Jim, his hair spangled with gray, his step just slightly less spry than in his heyday, opened the door to Artie's lab in the TARDIS and strode in. He started to call out his usual greeting to his old partner, then paused.

Something wasn't quite right. There was a pile of paraphernalia in the middle of the room — cameras, a backpack, a rolled-up tent — and a sound of rustling came from beyond a cabinet of supplies. Someone was raiding the lab? But who? And how could they have gotten in here?

"All right!" Jim ordered. "Come out with your hands up!"

A head popped out from behind the cabinet, a head with a merry smile under a tousled mop of white hair. "Uncle Jim!" Artie's daughter, the middle-aged blonde version, scampered out and across the room and threw herself into his arms for a huge bear hug.

"Well, this is pleasant surprise!" Jim beamed. "What are you doing here?" With a teasing smile, he added, "I'm amazed Rosalind lets you in here, you little scamp."

"Lets who in here?" came a voice from the back. There was a _hiss _as Artie opened the airlock of his cleanroom. He walked out, pulled the mask off his face, and started to unbutton his coveralls. "Hey, _Peaches!"_

"Hey, Dad!" She rushed over and gave him a huge bear hug as well. "I needed to borrow some equipment." She waved a hand at the pile in the floor.

"Oh, _borrow_, is it?" Artie picked up a motion sensor, then a roll of camouflage netting. "Uh-huh. And when was the actual _asking _portion of the borrowing going to occur, hmm?"

She grinned. "Eventually."

"Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Look at that, Jim! This is why my daughter comes to visit me: So she can clean me out and make off with all my stuff!"

"Hey, you're a pack rat!" she laughed. "I know if I need a thing, chances are you have a dozen." She grinned and poked her tongue out at Artie, who reached out and rumpled her hair in return.

Jim was looking over the pile for himself. "What sort of plans do you have for all this?" he asked. "You're setting up cameras to, what, take pictures of someone who doesn't want to be photographed?"

"Not exactly." She pulled a very modern cell phone out of her pocket and scrolled through some pictures. "Here. Have a look." She passed the phone to Jim and her dad. "That's a Pallas' cat, also known as the manul."

"Mighty fluffy thing!" Artie commented, looking at one picture after another.

"Palace?" Jim asked. "What sort of palace?"

"No, Pallas as in Pallas Athena. It was the last name of the German scientist who discovered the species, or at least first described it."

"Did he describe it as a walking fluffball?" said Artie.

"Dad! You know what I mean! Anyway, uptime — you know, when I picked up those pictures — I'm going to be involved in a project to set up surveillance in the wild to map the range of the Pallas' cat and get an idea of how many there are. They live in central Asia in the higher elevations…"

"Which explains the thick coat of fur," Jim murmured.

"Right. And they…"

"Look at those eyes, though! Round pupils. That's unusual for a cat."

"Yes, Dad," said his daughter patiently. "Anyway, I was going to use some of your equipment to help set up some motion-sensing cameras to get pictures and video, just like…"

Both men laughed, drowning her out. "Look at that!" exclaimed Artie.

"Smart little critter," Jim agreed. "Comes out of its den, spots the camera…"

"Oh, you found the gif. Yep, rushes over to check it out, and pokes its nose right into the camera lens," she said.

"What a marvelous creature!" Artie handed back the phone, a big grin still on his face. "Well, if that's what you need the equipment for… Sure, Peaches, borrow whatever you want."

"Just make sure you bring it all back," Jim put in.

"Yeah… and in working order still would be good too," Artie added with a teasing glance.

She closed her eyes. "I don't break things, Dad."

"No?"

"Ok, ok! Not that often, at least!"

"Oh, not _that _often!" Artie echoed and rumpled her hair again.

"Thanks, Dad! You're the best!" She gave him another big bear hug, then popped open a familiar device strapped to her wrist and started typing in coordinates.

"Where are you going with all this?" Jim asked.

"Oh, I drew the hard one. We're mapping all the high mountains throughout Asia, just in case some communities of Pallas' cats might have been missed. I have part of the Himalayas."

Jim and Artie exchanged a glance. "Would, ah, that be including Mt Everest itself?"

"Hm-mmm." Concentrating on her typing, she missed the follow-up glance her dad and Uncle Jim shot each other. She looked up in time to see Jim pick up one of the bundles and take it back to the cabinet. "Hey, what are you doing with that?" she yelped.

"Getting you the larger one," he replied.

"Huh? But why?"

"Trust us, Peaches," said her father, draping an arm around her shoulders. "You're going to need a bigger tent."

**FIN**_(-ish…)_


End file.
